


make you miss me

by mandaestella



Series: montevallo [3]
Category: Actor RPF, Alexbelle, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Hunger Games (Movies), The Hunger Games (Movies) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-10-28 10:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandaestella/pseuds/mandaestella
Summary: when alexander ludwig and isabelle fuhrman are suddenly tasked with the overwhelming responsibility of unexpectedly raising a child, they have to figure out how to work together - and they have to do it quickly. but they both have secrets, all of which become harder to keep when they are living in the same house.or the life as you know it au that has been in my drafts for four years and was waiting for the right time for me to write it.





	make you miss me

**Author's Note:**

> / the only reason that you're good at goodbye is  
/ every boy you ever met was too easy to forget  
/ well i ain't going out like that  
make you miss me by sam hunt
> 
> hello there - i know nothing about children. i only know a little bit about probate law. i know a whole lot about juvenile law + debilitating neuro diseases. i know even more about loss. all of those things come together in this fic, and i know it sounds boring, but i promise (i don't promise; i am just seriously hoping) that it is not. i haven't proofread this (like literally at all), so please let me know if there are any glaring mistakes (there are, lbr). 
> 
> if you're reading this, a million thank yous. it means the entire world to me.

** summer **

When Madeline told Isabelle she wanted to set her up on a blind date, Isabelle’s answer was a resounding no. She didn’t go on dates, much less blind ones, although that was probably her sister’s point. “Isabelle,” she told her. “All you do is work. You need to have a little fun. You need to leave the office before eight o’clock on Friday nights. You need to, at the very least, get laid.”

“I’m fine.” Isabelle rolled her eyes, only half listening to what her sister was saying. This was an insanely ridiculous time to be having this conversation; Madeline had just given birth, for fuck’s sake. They were sitting in a hospital room; a nurse had just taken her brand new baby away for newborn tests, and Madeline’s husband Dayo was downstairs getting pudding from the cafeteria. She figured he would be back soon, at least if he valued his own life since Madeline had told him that if she didn’t get some pudding in the next five minutes, her head was going to explode.

“You’re not fine. You’re twenty-six years old and you haven’t been on a date in almost a year.”

“I was engaged, Maddie. You don’t just get over that.”

Madeline waved that away. “You were engaged two years ago. And Nicky was a piece of shit. You are much better off without him.”

“I don’t disagree. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for another serious relationship.”

Dayo came back into the room, handing Madeline a SnackPack and a spoon hesitantly, like he thought she might whip it at his head. It was a fair assumption, considering she had thrown his smoothie at him fifteen hours ago while she was in the middle of a contraction. She took it, and they had one of those really quick, silent, married people conversations that consisted of a facial expression and not much else. Then Madeline turned back to Isabelle.

“It doesn’t have to be serious, Iz,” she said, ripping the top off of her pudding. “It can just be for fun.”

“Are you setting her up with Alex?” Dayo asked as he plopped down on a chair on the other side of her bed.

“I’m trying.” Madeline held a spoonful of pudding out to him like a peace offering, which he took gratefully. “She’s not taking it well.”

Isabelle sighed, deciding to humor them. “Alright. I’ll bite. Alex, like your best friend?”

“Yes,” Dayo said, passing the spoon back to Madeline.

“I don’t like lawyers, Dayo.”

“You’re a lawyer!”

“I’m a sports agent. It’s very different.”

“Whatever,” Dayo muttered. “We still went to law school together.”

Isabelle was the one who had introduced Madeline and Dayo years ago. She had met Dayo on her first day of law school after sitting next to him at orientation. They were bound at the hip after that, and it only took her a couple of months to get him and Madeline in the same place. For them, it was love at first sight, and no one was happier than Isabelle when the two of them got married last year. After passing the bar, Dayo went corporate, getting a job at a big law firm in New York City right out of law school, which was where he met Alex. Isabelle went a different route, working as an associate for the biggest sports agency on the East Coast. She was on the fast track to partner, and she was thinking about starting her own firm, something that Madeline wasn’t too excited about since she already thought Isabelle was a workaholic.

“Y’all just had a baby. Are you sure you want to spend your energy on finding me a boyfriend?”

“Come on, Iz,” Madeline said pleadingly, giving her one of the looks that she knew Isabelle couldn’t say no to. How unfair. “Just give him a chance. He’s nice.”

Isabelle knew of Alex, of course. She had met him a few times, and he had been a groomsman in the wedding. But Isabelle worked so much that she missed out on a lot of dinners and parties and had never spent more than a couple of hours at a time around him, even less of them when she was actually sober.

Anyways, it didn’t matter because Madeline was wrong. Alex was not nice.

He was cute, sure. And he was nice at first. A couple of days after Ryan was born, Alex picked her up and took her to a nice restaurant and told her she looked pretty. They had a good conversation, lots of things to talk about and no awkward silences. But then, smack dab in the middle of dinner, he got a phone call that sure sounded like it was from a girl, and suddenly he was standing up and throwing a couple of hundreds on the table and telling Isabelle that he had to go, leaving without so much as a backwards glance. And that was the end of their very short-lived relationship.

She saw him a lot over the next year. He was Dayo’s best friend, and to his credit, he was around whenever Dayo asked: for family dinner on Friday nights and barbecues on the weekends, for football games on Sundays and Thanksgiving dinner and movie nights. He even showed up the surprise party that Madeline threw Isabelle when she turned twenty-seven. (Madeline had never given up on the idea of Alex and Isabelle dating, even though Isabelle damn near jumped out a window every time she mentioned it.)

And above all else, Alex loved Ryan. He was there for her first everything: the first time she rolled over by herself, her first word, (“Alex, you’ve got to be kidding me. Poopa is not a word.” “It sure is.” “Okay. What does it mean?” “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s another word for blunt, but don’t tell Madeline that.”), her first steps. He changed her diapers and held her hand as she toddled around Dayo and Madeline’s massive living room, keeping her away from all the glass tables and slippery wood floors and stone fireplace that dominated the room. He was there for her baptism, her first Halloween, her first Christmas. And he was there at her first birthday party.

It was June; one year ago today Isabelle had been in the delivery room with her sister, trying her best not to look at what was going on. Dayo was there on Madeline’s other side, getting all of his fingers broken, and after thirty hours of labor, Ryan was born. Isabelle wasn’t a sentimental person, but she cried every time she remembered that moment.

She wasn’t going to cry today, not if she could help it. As much as she loved Ryan, she hated all other children, and she was hiding out in Madeline’s giant sun-soaked kitchen, sitting on top of a marble countertop bigger than Madeline’s Range Rover, certain that if her sister could see her, she would disown her. Fortunately, her sister was out in the backyard with a bunch of screaming toddlers and exhausted parents. Only the people without kids were inside, circling the kitchen because that’s where the beer was.

Isabelle’s best friend, Leven, was already more toasted than Isabelle planned to get for a one year old’s birthday party, although she couldn’t blame her. If anyone was more uncomfortable around other people’s children than Isabelle, it was Leven.

Leven graduated from Yale Law the same time Isabelle and Dayo were getting done at Columbia; she started at the sports agency a day after Isabelle did. They bonded instantly, based on the fact that they were both young, female, and had little to no idea what the fuck they were doing. If Isabelle ever did decide to start her own firm, she was taking Leven with her.

Isabelle was looking out the window, watching Madeline follow Ryan across the yard towards the bounce house as Leven grabbed another beer out of the fridge, just about to knock the top off against the counter before Alex reached around her and grabbed it out of her hand.

“Give that back!” she shrieked.

“Leven.” Alex twisted the beer top off using the bottom of his shirt, handing it back to her. “Madeline would have killed you if she’d seen you using her counter like that.”

“Madeline isn’t here. She’s out there.” Leven pointed, frowning at him and planting her other hand on her hip. “With the little demons.”

“Lev!” Isabelle tried to scold her, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Leven always said what everyone else was thinking, regardless of the audience.

“What?” Leven rolled her eyes, taking a big sip of her beer. “It’s the truth.”

“You want a beer, Izzie?” Alex asked her, nudging her legs aside as he squeezed between her and Leven to get to the fridge. There was absolutely no reason he couldn’t go around them, but he liked to antagonize her as much as possible.

She shrugged. “I… uh…” But then she looked out the window at the screaming children descending on the bounce house and the petting zoo and the clown making balloon animals like a tiny mob. “Yes. Please.”

He grabbed two Coronas from the fridge, letting the door slam shut as he held one out to her, stepping a whole lot closer than he needed to. The kitchen was crowded, but it wasn’t that crowded. Alex showed up to every dinner or party or barbecue with a different girl on his arm, but he apparently still got a whole lot of satisfaction out of making her blush. She was glad she was wearing her hair down because as he brushed a hand over her bare knee and handed her a beer, she knew her ears were glowing red.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, swiping it out of his hand quickly to avoid as much physical contact as possible. But he was Alex, and he tapped his cheek with the tip of his own beer bottle, a smirk spreading across his face.

“Come on, Izzie,” he said, his voice laced with honey. “Just one thank you kiss.”

She shoved him away, his skin feeling like it was burning up under her hand, even through his t-shirt. She rolled her eyes, tried to seem nonchalant. “Get outta here with that.” His eyes flashed even bluer when he winked at her. She had been single for four years; she wasn’t blind, and Alex was more attractive than most. She just wished that she had the willpower to keep her eyes off of him when they were in the same room, a goal she had not yet conquered.

They had never talked about their failed date from last June. The next time she saw Alex was at Dayo’s birthday, just a couple of weeks later, and Alex pretended like nothing had happened. A couple of times throughout the night, she saw his eyes drift over to her, and sometimes she would look at him to see him watching her. But he never brought it up, so neither did she. After a couple more dinners tinged with awkwardness, the memory faded away, leaving them with a friendship filled with bickering and laughter and just the slightest bit of sexual tension.

Isabelle cleared her throat quickly, pushing him away again when he drifted back into her space. “Don’t you have a girlfriend around here somewhere?”

“Woah, woah, woah.” That got him to step back, and Leven snickered. She was rooting around in the fridge, probably for a lime wedge to put into her beer. Isabelle kicked it close with a dangling foot. “Let’s chill out with that whole girlfriend word.”

“What was her name?” Leven asked innocently, leaning on the counter and looking up at him with wide eyes. “Kara? Katie? Kelly?”

“It’s Kristy,” Alex said, a snap running through his voice. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Well.” Leven raised her bottle to her mouth. “She seems nice.” She snorted as she took a sip, and Isabelle had to look down at her lap to keep from laughing because they both knew that this girl was far from nice.

Alex knew it too. “Shut up,” he said, pushing Leven sideways gently. “You shut up too,” he said to Isabelle when she snorted again. “It’s just…”

“Sex,” Leven said, rolling her eyes. “We know. God forbid you find a nice girl and settle down. You’re thirty, for fuck’s sake.”

“Do not.” Alex pointed his drink at her accusingly. “You’re only a couple of years behind, Rambin.”

“I’m twenty-eight.” She shrugged. “I’m lightyears behind.”

As if on cue, Kristy came into the kitchen, her arm hooked through Jackie’s. “Traitor,” Leven whispered to Isabelle, who practically choked on her beer.

“What face are you making?” Alex asked Jackie as she got closer.

“This is just my face, Alexander,” she sighed. “Dayo is asking for you.”

“Why?”

“Do I look like Dayo? I have no idea.”

“Where is he?”

Jackie jerked her chin towards the backyard. “Bounce house.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, cutting Alex off as he opened his mouth. “And I know that there’s a clown back there. But if you walk really fast, he won’t see you.”

Alex muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “I hate you,” his fear of clowns not a secret from anyone at that point, but he hooked his arm around Kristy’s shoulder, grabbing his beer off the counter and steering her away. He looked back over his shoulder, winking at Isabelle one more time as they left the kitchen.

“What did Dayo want?” Isabelle asked, her cheeks burning red. She focused her attention out the window, trying to spot her brother-in-law.

“No idea.” Jackie hopped up next to her, grabbing her beer out of her hand and taking a long swig. “I made it up.”

Isabelle laughed, looking down at Leven who was probably only about two drinks away from blacking out. She would have to keep a very close eye on her for the rest of the afternoon. “Why?”

“Because Kristy latched on and I couldn’t get her off. That girl is a python.”

“You are far too nice for your own good.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”

“Where’s Jilli?”

“On the bounce house with Jack.” Jackie looked out the window, craning her neck to try to see her husband and their three year old daughter. “We are never getting her out of that thing.”

It turned out there was one thing that could get twenty screaming toddlers out of a bounce house, and that thing was cake. Madeline came flying into the house, followed by a swarm of children being herded by their parents, all of them sitting as still as they could around the giant dining room table. “Iz,” Madeline said, sticking her head into the kitchen. “Can you grab paper plates?”

“Yup.” Isabelle jumped down from the counter, her feet stinging where they hit the high-gloss tile floor. “Jackie, watch Lev.”

She disappeared into the pantry, trying to reach the stack of glittery pink paper plates from the top shelf next to the door, balancing herself on a case of exorbitantly expensive water. She was just brushing her fingers over the plastic bag when someone spread an impossibly huge hand over her waist, steadying her. “This is stupid, Izzie.” She heard Alex’s voice, and she looked down to see him grinning up at her. “You’re gonna fall. Move.”

Normally she wouldn’t let him take over like that, but he was right; if she stretched even an inch further, she was going to go down and take at least one of the shelves with her. So she hopped down, trying to focus on landing on her feet and not the feeling of his hands around her waist. “Thanks,” she said. She was pretty sure that when she spoke to Alex, she sounded normal, but even a year after they had started hanging out all the time, her brain sometimes whited out when he addressed her directly.

“Although you do owe me already.”

“Why’s that?” Isabelle looked up at him as he hopped up onto the case of Voss.

“Because.” He looked down at her, and even in the dark his eyes were so blue that they practically glowed in the dark. “Dayo did not need my help. And I had to walk past a clown. A clown, Isabelle.”

“That wasn’t me! That was all Jackie.”

“Oh please.” He snorted, grabbing the plates and handing them down to her easily. “You and Jackie are the same person.”

He wasn’t wrong. Jackie rounded out their little group, linking them all together. She was their childhood friend and she worked with Madeline; they were both third year surgical residents at Lenox Hill. Jackie’s husband Jack was also an attorney, and the seven of them spent almost all of their free time together.

“Bite me,” Isabelle managed as he jumped down, hitting her with that smile again.

“Oh, Izzie. You wish.”

All of a sudden the pantry felt very small and dark and quiet around them, and she took a step back, not totally trusting herself to be that close to him. “We should… uh…” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder towards the kitchen and the dining room, where the party was bright and loud. “I think it’s cake time.”

Alex dipped his head towards her deferentially. “After you.”

She blinked against the bright light as they re-entered the kitchen. Jackie was steering Leven through the giant French doors into the dining room. The living room, set down a couple of steps, was just past the dining room, open and airy with the light shining in through the high glass ceilings, and Leven collapsed into one of the giant stuffed couches, Jackie sitting down next to her and catching Jillian as she ran over to them, her pink tutu bouncing around her waist.

“Iz!” Madeline called, waving them over. “Alex!” She pushed through the crowd of people, holding the pile of plates over the heads of children until she got to her sister, passing them over. She stood there next to her sister and Dayo, taking pictures as Ryan smashed cake in her own face and then tried to do it to Isabelle. She tried to keep from crying, but she failed, just like she knew she would.

And her heart was warm as she was surrounded by Madeline and Dayo and Jackie and Jack and Alex and Leven, who eventually managed to get off the couch and come over to them. They were celebrating the birth of the person that they all loved the most, and Isabelle was sure in that moment that she had never been happier. For a moment it didn’t matter that all she did was work or that she was single or that sometimes she felt like her life was passing her by. Because she had the rest of her life to figure those things out. For now she could just be in the moment, surrounded by her people, letting the rest of the world go on around them.

✨✨✨

It was never good to be woken up out of a deep sleep, but it was even worse when you were babysitting your sister’s one year old daughter.

The first thing Isabelle did when she jerked awake was check the baby monitor sitting next to the bed, sure that the shrieking alarm that had woken her was actually Ryan crying. But she could see even through the haze of sleep and the darkness of the monitor that Ryan was fast asleep. It took her another couple of seconds to realize that it was her phone ringing, and she managed to grab it at the last second before it rolled over to voicemail.

“Mads?” she said sleepily, clearing her throat when her voice came out scratchy. “I swear to God if you woke your daughter up, I’m going to-”

The voice on the other end of the line was clear and deep and definitely not her sister’s. She sat up, suddenly wide awake, and every single vein in her body rushed cold.

It was the end of June, and Madeline and Dayo were in Seattle, taking a mini working vacation because Madeline had a conference. Jackie and Jack were with them, so Leven and Isabelle teamed up to babysit, watching Ryan and Jillian at Madeline and Dayo’s house in Westchester. In retrospect, Isabelle had no idea what she would have done if Leven hadn’t been there. She was fantastic, booking Isabelle a flight and telling her that she would stay as long as she needed to take care of the girls. She called Isabelle’s mom in Los Angeles and her dad in Atlanta, waking them both up and trying to break the news as gently as she could, and she ordered Isabelle a car to take her to the airport.

Alex met Isabelle at Laguardia, and he looked as bad as she was sure she did. He had big dark circles under his eyes, and she could tell by the redness on his cheeks that he had been crying. Isabelle hadn’t cried yet; for some reason that was the thought that kept circling through her brain. She was supposed to be crying. She was supposed to be feeling something. Instead she was just… numb.

They didn’t talk much, exchanged quick hugs hello and remained silent as they filed through security and got onto the plane. Alex pulled down the shade over the window, neither of them wanting to look at the sun rising above the clouds when for all intents and purposes their lives were over. When they landed in Seattle, there was another car waiting (thank you, Leven) to take them directly to Kindred Hospital.

Jackie and Jack were waiting in the lobby, both of them jumping up when Alex and Isabelle came through the sliding doors. They pointed her directly towards the desk, Jack accompanying her up there. “Alright,” he said, his voice cracked and dry and hoarse. “Her sister is here now. Does that mean you can finally tell us something?”

The nurse behind the desk glared at him, and it was clear that she had walked into the middle of a fight, but she must have paged someone because the doctor came out almost immediately. “Isabelle Fuhrman?” he asked, and that was the moment when her legs gave out. They left Jackie and Jack in the waiting room, clutching each other’s hands nervously, and Alex was supposed to stay with them but Isabelle couldn’t walk on her own and no one protested when he followed them back through the swinging doors and into a tiny quiet room with a couple of chairs and a box of Kleenex. He deposited her in a chair, sitting down next to her and keeping his arm around her protectively.

They both knew what was coming.

“Isabelle,” the doctor said, his face grave. “I’m so sorry.” And the dam broke, all of the tears that she had been holding back for the last seven hours suddenly rushing to the surface.

She knew that Madeline and Dayo were both dead. The police officer on the phone hadn’t said as much, although she had kind of blacked out when he was talking to her. She had heard the words “hotel fire” and “your sister and brother-in-law” and “critical condition.” But now she was sitting in the Death Room at a hospital almost three thousand miles away from their home, listening to a doctor tell her that her closest family members were dead. They had been on the seventh floor of their hotel when the fire broke out, and they didn’t manage to get out in time. They had died from smoke inhalation, he said, which was the point in the conversation when Isabelle shut down.

Thank God Alex was there. He asked all the right questions, getting the information about what they had to do next. The doctor told him that he would have them sent back to New York if they could give him the name of the funeral home, and Isabelle found herself feeling grateful that he wasn’t using the word “bodies” to describe them. Alex asked if they could see them, and the doctor hesitated.

“They’re not in great shape.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex said quickly, and Isabelle squeezed his hand. When he looked at her, a question in his eyes, she nodded, and he turned back to the doctor. “We need to see them.”

They were together. Good, Isabelle thought fleetingly. They should be together. They were always together. Alex stayed behind Isabelle as she entered the glass-walled ICU room where they were lying, and he put his hands on her shoulders as she inched towards them. Madeline still looked like Madeline, Isabelle thought as she sat down next to her. “Can I…” Her voice broke, the first words that she had spoken since they met the doctor. “Can I touch her?”

He nodded, and she reached out, taking Madeline’s hand. She expected her to be warm, and she wasn’t, the coldness of her sister’s skin shocking her. “Oh my God,” Alex said from behind her, and it was the first time since they had met at the airport that she had seen him break down. He sank down next to Dayo, in between the two beds, and when she looked over at him he had his face in his hands, giant sobs shaking his shoulders.

The rest of the morning was a blur. Jackie and Jack got flights back to New York. Alex called Dayo’s attorney, who pulled up their will and gave him the name of the funeral home that Dayo had chosen so that Alex could pass it on to the hospital. It seemed like days passed, but a few hours later they were back at the airport, all four of them.

Leven met them at the airport, having enlisted Isabelle’s parents who had just flown in to watch the girls. She looked okay until Isabelle ran up to her, and as soon as Isabelle hugged her, she burst into tears. “What the fuck?” she kept saying over and over as they drove back to Westchester. “What the fuck happened?”

Over the next few days, they stayed at Madeline and Dayo’s house, all of them: Isabelle, Leven, Isabelle’s parents, Alex, Jack, Jackie, and the girls. The house was big enough that it never felt crowded, all of them drifting to various wings of the house when they needed to get away from each other. Leven, the planner of the group, took over the funeral preparations, working with Isabelle’s mom to set everything up. Isabelle couldn’t even stand hearing about it, much less being a part of the conversation. Instead she spent most of her time with Ryan and Alex, the three of them crawling around on the ground in the backyard or the playroom.

“She’s young,” Alex said one day when they were sitting on the grass, watching Ryan search for worms. Alex had his eyes trained on her like a hawk in case she miraculously found one and decided to shove it directly into her mouth again. “That’s the good part, right? Maybe she won’t…”

He trailed off, but Isabelle knew exactly what he was going to say. “Remember them?”

“It sounds bad. But yeah.”

Isabelle sighed heavily. She had been crying so much that she felt like a shell of a person, like every single part of who she was had been drained out of her. The funeral was tomorrow, and she was glad that she had Alex here with her being distracting so that she didn’t have to spend every waking minute wondering how she was going to get through it.

“I know.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I’ve been thinking that too.”

Ryan came crawling over, a handful of dirt and grass clutched in her tiny fist. She held it out to Alex, her eyes wide. “For me?” he asked.

“You!”

“Thank you, my love.” He put it on his knee carefully, like he was going to keep it forever, and Ryan smiled as smugly as a one year old could. She came back with a twig and a pebble for Isabelle, stacked them up on her knee, looking over at Alex’s pile of grass like she was studying it very carefully.

Alex sat next to her at the funeral, in the front row with Isabelle and her parents. He held Ryan the entire time, the only one who could keep her quiet when she started to babble. And Isabelle was there, at least physically, although everything seemed like it was happening in one of those fun house mirrors, everyone distorted and weird and different. She listened to Leven and Jackie talk about Madeline, Alex and Jack taking the podium to give Dayo’s obituaries. When it was her turn, she said a few words, barely able to force them out past the lump in her throat. She cried in the car on the way to the cemetery, following Alex out to the gravesite like a robot, Leven on one arm and Jackie on the other.

And when they got back to the house, she shut herself in the room that Madeline always told her was hers, crawled into bed, and didn’t move for twenty-four hours.

✨✨✨

Elina and Nick had gotten divorced when Isabelle was seven and Madeline was nine. They had grown up with it; Isabelle had never really known anything different. She hoped against hope that Ryan would feel the same way when she was twenty-seven years old. She hoped against hope that Ryan’s heart would never shatter in her chest the way Isabelle’s had.

Madeline had been her best friend for her entire life, as long as she could remember. She was by Isabelle’s side for everything: her first boyfriend, her first heartbreak, her senior prom, her high school graduation. She was in the front row at Isabelle’s college graduation. She sat next to her at the kitchen table when Isabelle opened her law school admissions letters. She held her hair back as she threw up from nerves the night before she started at the firm. And Isabelle was right there at her wedding, helping her put her on dress on and crying when Dayo saw her for the first time. She could remember Madeline saying “I can’t wait to do this for you someday soon.”

And now there would be no someday. There would be no soon. Madeline would never get to be at her wedding or see Ryan grow up or do anything because she was dead.

The day before Isabelle’s parents were set to leave, fly back to their respective homes and jobs and lives, Alex came into Isabelle’s room. She had started calling it her room in her head, hadn’t been back to her apartment since the day before Madeline and Dayo flew to Seattle. She knew that at some point she was going to have to go back there, but she wasn’t ready to be completely alone. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that just having other people in the house made her feel better.

“Hey.” He sat down on the edge of her bed, and she curled up into an even tighter ball underneath the blanket, pulling it over her head. “What’s up?”

“We have to go downtown,” Alex said, putting his hand on her back lightly.

“Why?” Isabelle couldn’t even muster the energy to lift her head from the pillow or roll over to look at him.

“The lawyer wants to see us.”

That got her attention. Even so it took a while for them to get out the door because Isabelle had her hourly breakdown in Madeline’s closet when she went in there to find something to wear. Leven helped her, shooing her out the door to wait while she picked something out, eventually coming back with Madeline’s navy suit, the one that she wore when she had her interview at Lenox Hill. About two hours later they were in a Town Car, heading into Manhattan.

The estate planner that Madeline and Dayo used was in the same building as that giant firm that Dayo and Alex worked at, the security guard saying hello to Alex as they pushed through the turnstiles, the lobby rising high over their heads, all glittering chandeliers and shiny black and white tiled floors and giant windows. Isabelle never felt fancy enough to be in this building, especially not today when her sister’s suit was hanging off her and she hadn’t managed to wash her hair in three days.

“What does he want?” Isabelle asked Alex as they shot up towards the twentieth floor in the glass elevator, the city falling away beneath them.

“To go over their will,” Alex said. “That’s all he said. I think it’s gonna be pretty basic.”

Alex thought wrong.

“They what?” Isabelle felt the words leave her mouth in a rush before she could stop them. They were sitting in front of the attorney’s massive mahogany desk in high-backed leather chairs; Isabelle was feeling incredibly out of her element. She leaned over the copy of the will that the attorney had slid towards them when he started talking.

The big question hanging over everyone’s head was what was going to happen to Ryan. She was Ryan’s godmother, but the possibility of both Madeline and Dayo suddenly dying had never crossed anyone’s mind until it happened. Madeline and Dayo, on the other hand, had thought about it extensively. They just hadn’t let Isabelle in on their plan.

“They want you two to raise Ryan,” the attorney said patiently. “In their will, they have specified that the two of you should live in their house, which will be paid off with a portion of their estate, and raise their daughter.”

Alex shook his head, and Isabelle couldn’t tell if he was outright rejecting the idea or if he was just as confused as she was. “I’m… There has to be some mistake. They never…” He looked over at Isabelle. “They never said anything about this to me.”

“Me either,” she said quickly, still staring at the will. The words were right there in front of her in black and white. She flipped to the last page to find the date; it had been signed and notarized just a couple of days before Madeline and Dayo left town. “This is new.”

“Brand new,” the attorney said. “They just finished it. I’m assuming they meant to talk to you two, but…” He trailed off. There was no need to finish the sentence.

“They want us to live in the house?” Alex asked, sliding the will over towards himself so that he could flip through it.

“Yes.”

“And raise Ryan.”

“Yes.”

“Together?” Isabelle fought the urge to rub her eyes.

“Yes.”

“What happens if we… don’t?” Isabelle felt bad even asking the question.

“Ryan will go to your mother in Los Angeles.”

“Okay.” Alex stood up quickly, startling both Isabelle and the lawyer. “We need to… uh… We need to go talk about this.”

He didn’t give the attorney a chance to say anything, just pulled Isabelle’s chair back for her as she stood up, grabbed the will, and practically sprinted towards the elevators. She thought that they were leaving, but instead Alex pressed the button for the fiftieth floor. They flew up another thirty floors to Cravath, Alex’s firm.

Isabelle knew Alex was rich. Every law student in the country knew that starting associates at Cravath made two hundred thousand dollars a year, and by the time they were a fifth year like Alex, that number climbed past three hundred. She just always forgot, probably due to his proclivity to wearing ripped jeans and t-shirts and the Air Force Ones that he had probably had since he passed the bar. But she was reminded of it now as they entered the sprawling office space high above Manhattan with its glass windows that looked down on everyone else, rich mahogany, and plush carpet.

Everyone said hello to Alex as they passed, all of them with that look in their eyes, a combination of grief and apologies and the discomfort that came with not knowing what to say. He nodded at them, keeping his eyes straight ahead for the most part until they got to his office. He shut the heavy wood door behind them, steering Isabelle to a big stuffed chair in the corner next to a floor to ceiling bookshelf. He sat her down, choosing to take the chair next to her instead of the wingback behind his desk.

As soon as he sat down, he let out a big sigh, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his top button, throwing his legs over the arm of the chair so that he faced her. She had a sudden vision of him doing this in the middle of the day, shutting the door and acting more like the kid at heart that she knew him to be than the thirty year old lawyer who spent his days litigating complex issues for corporations. “So,” he said, tilting his head and looking at her. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t fucking know.” Isabelle looked down at her lap, running the hem of Madeline’s skirt through her fingers. “That was…”

“Shocking.”

“Yes.” She looked up at Alex. “To say the least.”

“What’s your gut reaction?”

“I mean…” Isabelle shrugged. “I’ve got a couple.”

“Okay. Name them.” She could just see him seated at a conference table with his clients in front of them, convincing him with that smile and charm and logic to tell him their reservations about the deal they were being offered. She didn’t totally understand what Alex did, but she knew that part of his job was getting as much money as he could during mergers and acquisitions, and there was no wonder he was so good at it; she didn’t see how anyone could say no to him.

“I’m not a mom,” she blurted out quickly. “I have no idea how to raise a child. I don’t even like children, except for Ryan and Jillian. And I work ridiculous hours, and so do you, and I honestly don’t know what the fuck Madeline and Dayo were thinking. I don’t know why they didn’t clue us in. I don’t know…” She shook her head. “They were out of their goddamn minds.”

“Okay.” Alex nodded once. “What else?”

“I don’t know what I’ll do if Ryan goes to Los Angeles with my mom.” This was the bigger thought in her mind, the one that immediately dwarfed her doubt and fear and anger as soon as the attorney voiced it as a possibility. “If that’s the alternative…” She trailed off.

“She’s lost everything,” Alex said, his voice soft. “Even if she doesn’t know it.” He bit his lip, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he thought. “Do you think your mom would stay here?”

“Not a chance.” Isabelle didn’t even have to think about it. “Her life is out there. We couldn’t ask her to do that.” Alex nodded, deep in thought. Isabelle waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t she nudged his Louboutin dress shoe with her elbow. “What are you thinking?”

“It’s crazy,” he said, looking up at her, the dimple in his cheek apparent even though he wasn’t smiling. “I mean… it’s nuts, right? We pay off their house, which is insane in and of itself. Like I know Dayo made some good investments but that house has gotta be over a million dollars. And then what. We live there? The two of us? Who know nothing about raising a kid?”

Isabelle shook her head again. “Yeah. Crazy.”

“But…” He looked out the window, the sky so blue and the world going on around them like nothing had happened. “It’s Ryan. I would do anything for her. And I know you would too. Dayo and Madeline knew that. And I don’t think they would have wanted us to do this if they weren’t absolutely one hundred percent sure that we could.”

Isabelle felt her eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline. “You think we should do it?”

“I mean…” Alex rubbed the back of his neck, cracking it loudly. “Gut reaction… yes. I know it’s crazy. But this is what they wanted.”

“You’re ready to be a dad?”

“I’m thirty,” Alex said. “And I’ve been taking care of people for a long…” He cut himself off quickly, but he didn’t give Isabelle a chance to dwell on what he was about to say. “I love that little girl more than anything. She deserves stability. And if there’s even the slightest possibility that we can give that to her, I think we should.”

Just then someone knocked on the door, opening it before Alex had a chance to say anything. He stood up quickly, but Isabelle saw Kristy for a brief moment before he stepped in front of her. They had a short, whispered conversation in the doorway, Alex bracing one hand on the door and the other on the frame, effectively keeping Isabelle from being able to hear or see anything, not that that stopped her from trying.

After about a minute, Alex shut the door again, turning back to Isabelle. She quickly looked down at her lap, trying to make it seem like she hadn’t been eavesdropping. When she first started spending more time with Alex, there were a couple of months where she could barely even look at him, much less have a conversation with him. Every time she tried, she remembered their disastrous blind date and the feeling that came over her when she realized that yes, he really was getting up and leaving her in this restaurant. She kept waiting for him to bring it up, but he never did. As the months flew by and he became a permanent fixture in her life, she got over that. But that didn’t mean she was blind; sometimes when he looked at her, fixing her in place with those blue eyes and the goddamn dimples, her heart stopped for a moment. And sure, sometimes when he brought a new girl around, she got a little jealous. Which was ridiculous, she knew; they had never even kissed. She had no more claim on him than anyone else, other than for the fact that somehow along the way he had become one of her closest friends.

“Sorry about that,” he said, jerking her out of her thoughts. “She just…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Isabelle said quickly, really not in the mood to hear about Kristy. “So… now what?”

“I think we should go back and talk to the lawyer. And then we should go home and tell everyone.”

“You think they’re going to take it well?”

Alex laughed, the first genuine laugh that she had heard from him in a week. “Oh, they’re gonna lose their fucking minds.”

He was not wrong.

They got home a few hours later, immediately calling a family meeting and sitting them all down in the living room, Isabelle’s parents and Jack and Jackie and Leven. Alex stood up in front of the fireplace, Isabelle next to him, Ryan and Jillian sleeping in the pack and play in the corner, everyone staring at them expectantly. The moment he told them what Madeline and Dayo had written in their will, the room exploded with all of the same questions that Isabelle and Alex had had.

“They what?”

“You two are going to live here?”

“Together?”

“Like here in this house?”

“Together?”

“And you’re going to be her legal guardians?”

“Together? The two of you? Like the two of you together?”

“Enough,” Isabelle said firmly, quieting everyone down. She knew that they had been the most worried about her, that she had been the one to retreat into herself and reject everyone’s offers for help. And she couldn’t help but think that Madeline knew this would happen if she was gone, that the only thing that could bring her back would be Ryan. “This is happening. We’ve already signed the paperwork.”

Before they left the attorney’s office, they signed their names about ten separate times, the attorney’s secretary notarizing everything as they went. They called their landlords, explaining the situation and giving up their apartments. And when they walked out of the building, they officially had the house, their portion of the estate, and legal guardianship of Ryan, although there was a motion that the attorney was going to immediately file in family court to truly make that legal. But in name and spirit, they were now parents.

Elina shook her head, looking at Nick. Isabelle knew what her mom was going to say before she even said it. “Are you two ready for this? I don’t think you have any idea what this is going to entail.”

“Of course we’re not ready!” Isabelle burst out. “We’re not ready for any of this. We didn’t ask for this. And we certainly weren’t ready for Madeline and Dayo to suddenly be gone. But this is where we’re at and we have to figure out how the fuck to go on from here.” She looked at her parents quickly. “Sorry. For saying fuck just then. And now when I just said it again.”

Leven snorted, trying to hide it in her shoulder, but as soon as she started laughing, Jackie did too. That set Jack off which triggered Alex, and before long they were all laughing so hard that they were crying, even though nothing was really funny.

They were all one big family. They had been for a while, and that was even more apparent now that tragedy had touched them, had settled in their home and spread out like it lived there. But they were going to be okay. Ryan had an army behind her, and so did Isabelle and Alex. They were all going to be okay.

✨✨✨

**fall**

They were not going to be okay.

Isabelle had never been so exhausted in her entire life. Not during college when she was partying every weekend until three in the morning and then getting up for her Monday morning eight a.m. Not in law school when she bartended at night and went to class during the day, staying up late after her shifts to read for torts. Not during her first year at the firm when she routinely fell asleep at her desk and woke up with the word Swingline printed backwards across her face.

But it only took a couple of months with Ryan before she forgot all about that.

Babysitting was nothing like actually having a kid twenty-four seven. Usually she would read a couple books, play with some stuffed animals, change a diaper or two, and put the kid to bed. By then, Madeline and Dayo would come home and take over. Now she was the one who had to take over, getting up at three in the morning when Ryan woke up crying, clearly not giving a shit that Isabelle hadn’t been able to fall asleep until two in the first place.

The first couple of nights after everyone left, they seemed fine. They took turns getting up, a baby monitor in each of their rooms. Isabelle would leave Post-its on the bars of the crib, telling Alex whether she had fed her or changed a diaper or just sat with her in the chair until she fell back asleep. But each day she woke up more and more tired until she was basically just doing everything on autopilot, finally falling asleep into her cereal one morning with a splash, which Ryan thought was hilarious.

The first time they had to go back to work, about two weeks after the funeral, Isabelle was a nervous wreck. She texted the daycare three times before lunch before Leven finally came into her office and took her phone away over her many protests. “You’re worse than Madeline was,” Leven said. “Which is really saying something.”

But then they started to fall into a routine, and she started believing again that they would be okay. She would get to sleep in a little bit while Alex got up early to take Ryan to daycare, and she would be the one to get off of work a little early to go pick her up. They would come home, make dinner, and sit around the table like a real little family, which she supposed that they were. It felt inexplicably like overnight she and Alex had turned into a team, like this person who sometimes made her so nervous was suddenly much more than just her friend, and she liked that.

Very quickly, she learned everything about him, the way that living with someone turned a relationship into something much more intimate. She knew that he had at least three cups of coffee before he left every morning. He was a neat freak, much more than she was, and she was forever thankful that they didn’t share a bathroom because he had a heart attack every time he came into her room and saw her towel on the bathroom floor. He wasn’t sleeping, something that she only knew because she wasn’t sleeping either and she could hear the sounds of Brooklyn 99 floating down the hallway softly every night after midnight.

They learned how to move around each other easily, although Isabelle’s heart still practically beat out of her damn chest every time Alex brushed up against her. She got used to Alex bringing her coffee in the morning before she could even get out of bed, of sitting with him at the kitchen table after Ryan fell asleep so that they could try to get some work done. They talked about litigation and contracts and negotiation strategy, bouncing ideas off of each other. He woke her up if she fell asleep on the couch in front of the television, sometimes carrying her to her bed when she was too exhausted to stand. He was as much a part of her life as Ryan was, and after a few months, it seemed like she couldn’t even remember what it had been like Before.

One Friday night Alex was leaning over a big case binder, trying to prep for some negotiation that would net him a lot of bonus money if he could pull it off. At least that’s what Isabelle thought; she didn’t really know what he was doing. She could tell, however, that he was getting more and more frustrated by the second. Finally he threw his pen down. “Fuck!”

“Alex.” Isabelle looked up from her laptop, glancing at the baby monitor in the middle of the table. “Calm down.”

“I can’t calm down,” he snapped. “Not when I’m a hack and completely talentless.”

“You’re not talentless.” Isabelle rolled her eyes. “You work at Cravath, for fuck’s sake.”

“That means nothing.”

“It means a lot.” Cravath was the number one law firm in the country. When they came to law school campuses to conduct interviews for summer associates, you had to be personally invited and hand selected to even sit down with someone. Alex had been one of only five first years in the entire country to get a law clerk position after his 1L year. That one summer of work could finance his entire second year of law school, and he went back after his 2L year. By the time he was a 3L, he had a written job offer, starting right after he passed the bar. It was almost unheard of. “So shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“Okay.” Isabelle slammed her laptop shut, reaching across the table and grabbing Alex’s binder away from him. He lunged for it, but she was too quick, holding it out of his reach. “We have got to get out of this house.”

“We can’t,” Alex said irritably. “We’re parents, remember?”

“Parents go out. Let me take care of it.”

Leven showed up on their doorstep an hour later, bag in hand. “Jesus,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to babysit for like three months now. You all held out way longer than we bet - I mean, than we thought you would.”

Alex glared at her. “You bet? On what?”

Leven sighed, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to hide anything from him, especially not when he was in this bad of a mood. He was a lawyer through and through; he could get anything out of anyone. “On how long it would be before you cracked.”

“What constitutes cracking?”

“Asking for help,” Leven said, pushing her way between them and dropping her bag in the entryway. “Of any kind. The two of you are equally stubborn, so I said it would be at least a month. Jackie said two, and Jack, unfortunately, said three, which means that I now owe him a hundred dollars.”

That brought a smirk to Alex’s face. “Sucks to suck, Lev.”

“Hey! I’m here to help you!”

Alex leaned down to kiss her on the cheek quickly. “Thank you, Lev. We’ll be back soon.”

Isabelle lingered behind him as he went down the front path toward his car, parked in the driveway. “Soonish,” she said as soon as he was out of earshot. “I’m going to try to get him to relax. Which could take a while.”

“No worries.” Leven hugged her tightly, holding on even after Isabelle let go. “I’ll be here all night.”

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

They ended up at Bridge View, which was much more hipster than Isabelle was used to, but it was only about fifteen minutes from Madeline and Dayo’s and had a really pretty view of the Hudson River. They settled down at a table by the window. “One drink,” Alex said, still cranky, a whiskey sour in front of him. “Just one.”

“Just one,” Isabelle repeated. “You got it.”

Five drinks later, they were still going strong. The table was littered with drink napkins and empty beer bottles and shot glasses (that had been Isabelle’s idea, and she was regretting it already), the waitress coming over every and now then to clear the table off and ask them if they needed anything else. The answer was always yes.

Isabelle had seen Alex drunk quite a few times; for as big as he was, he was kind of a lightweight, especially compared to Dayo and Jack. Even Leven had drunk him under the table on occasion. But neither of them had had a drink in quite a while, and that third beer was hitting them hard.

“Listen,” Alex said. He was leaning on his arm, practically sprawled across the table. At some point, he had yanked Isabelle’s chair so that she was right up next to him, citing the fact that the bar was loud and he couldn’t read lips so he had no idea what the fuck she was saying. His body was throwing heat at her, and she knew her face was flushed, hoping that she could blame it on the alcohol and not the fact that he was so close that if she moved a muscle she would brush up against him. “This is not how I thought my life would be going. Obviously. But…” She waited, holding her breath to see what was going to come out of his mouth. “God damn am I glad that it’s happening with you. Of all people.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She felt like she was back in contracts her first year of law school when she got cold called and completely forgot everything that she had spent hours and hours reading. “I… um… really?”

“Yes, really,” he said adamantly. “You’re my best friend.”

Warmth rushed straight to her heart, and it wasn’t just because their legs were practically touching under the table. “You’re my best friend too.”

He winked at her, and she couldn’t breathe. “Good.” He took another big drink, draining his glass completely and pushing it dangerously towards the edge of the table. “Isn’t it crazy? That the two of us ended up like this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… We live together. We spend every waking minute that we aren’t at work together. We have a kid together. You’re basically my girlfriend.”

Isabelle’s heart stopped, and she genuinely had no idea how to respond. Or at least, she thought she didn’t, until some alcohol-fueled words came flying out of her mouth before she could swallow them. “Well, I could’ve been.”

A smile spread slowly over Alex’s face. “Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah.” Isabelle shred a damp bar napkin between her fingers, already wishing that she hadn’t brought this up. “If you hadn’t run out on our date.”

“Isabelle, I-”

They were interrupted by the waitress coming back over, telling them that there were only fifteen minutes until bar close and if they wanted another drink they should order now. They had a quick conversation, Alex making the executive decision that they should order an Uber now since it was October and a little chilly if you had to stand outside for more than a couple of minutes at two o’clock in the morning. By the time they got out of the bar and into the waiting car, the moment had passed, and she had no idea what he was going to say. Half of her wanted to ask, and half of her thought that maybe it was better to never know.

The next morning, Alex was up early, making scrambled eggs and toast and bringing them to Isabelle in bed. She was more hungover than she had been since college, and when he sat down next to her in bed, she had to take a few deep breaths so that she didn’t throw up. But he kept sitting there with her until she was able to get a few bites of toast down, forcing her to take small sips of water.

If there was ever a moment that she was going to bring up their failed date again, it was going to be now. But she didn’t or couldn’t; she wasn’t sure which it was. She had never asked, but she assumed that he was still dating Kristy, based on how many times he left the room when his phone rang. He never brought her around, and neither one of them went out anymore, but she knew they worked very closely together, and he was probably spending all day with her even if Isabelle was the one he was coming home to. She tried to bat the thought away every time it came up, not wanting to picture him with her. If that meant she had feelings for him… well, she was going to bat that thought away too.

Even with the exhaustion and the stress and the grief, everything seemed to be going as smoothly as it could be, until suddenly one night in November, it wasn’t. She got home from work after picking Ryan up from daycare, was sitting on the living room floor with her because it was Alex’s turn to make dinner when his phone rang. He had a quick hushed conversation before he hung up.

Isabelle didn’t look up until she heard the jingle of his keys as he grabbed them off the counter. “Hey!” she said, her voice rising an octave instantly. “What are you doing?”

He looked distracted, like he didn’t even remember that she was there. “I’ve gotta run out for a second.”

Isabelle jumped up. “What?”

“I’ve gotta go, Izzie,” he said, something sharp running underneath his words. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“You can’t just leave me here!”

But he was already gone.

They had been bickering more ever since they had started parenting together, but none of it ever really seemed real, more about whose turn it was to get up or change a diaper or take the trash out. This time, however, they got into a full out fight. He was gone much longer than an hour; Isabelle had already put Ryan to sleep and was in her room reading a new client contract when Alex got home. It looked for a second like he was going to try to sneak past her door, but he knocked quickly.

“Hey.” He didn’t even stick his head in the door. “I’m home.”

She took off her glasses, putting them on the nightstand and rubbing her temples, where a major headache had formed the second he walked out the door. “What the fuck, Alex?”

He appeared in the doorway, looking exhausted. “What?”

The fact that he was feigning ignorance made her even more angry. “You’re just gonna run out on us to go see your girlfriend? That’s bullshit.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he snapped back at her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, really?” She checked her watch. “It’s almost midnight. Where the hell have you been for four hours?”

“It’s none of your business, Izzie.”

“We have a kid, Alex! I think it is my fucking business.”

“I didn’t want this,” he blurted out. “I didn’t ask for this. We spend every single waking moment together, and sometimes I need to go out and do some stuff.”

She wanted to press more, and she knew that she was more upset than the situation called for. But there were so many layers to what she was feeling that she could barely even unpack them. She was pissed off that Alex was out with a girl; she was confused about whether that pissed off feeling was because he was out at all or because he was out with someone who wasn’t her; she was scared about what that might mean. She was tired. She was stressed. She was probably PMS’ing. And above all, she missed Madeline and Dayo so much that sometimes it felt like she couldn’t breathe.

All she could muster was a “whatever, Alex.” He looked at her for what seemed like a long time before he walked away, the door to his room closing loudly behind him. Just to keep up, she slammed her door closed, which inevitably woke up Ryan. She spent hours trying to get her to go back to sleep which was Isabelle knew was her punishment for being so childish.

✨✨✨

**winter**

The house was giant, more house than the three of them needed, but even so every single room had been taken over by Ryan’s toys and the furniture from their apartments that they hadn’t sold or put into storage and Isabelle’s clothes and Alex’s books. But six months after Madeline and Dayo had died, Isabelle still hadn’t even opened the door to their bedroom. She was going to have to, sooner or later, she knew. And sooner was coming faster than she could prepare herself for.

After her big fight with Alex, the two of them had split up for Thanksgiving, Alex taking Ryan to his mom’s upstate, Isabelle flying to Atlanta for a week to see his dad. They didn’t talk about what had happened, about the shitty things that had been said, but things were different, a little chillier between them even when they got back. Alex didn’t bring Isabelle breakfast in bed anymore, and for a while their conversations were relegated strictly to who was going to pack Ryan’s bag for daycare and when the last time she’d had a diaper change was. Alex spent more and more time out of the house, leaving after Ryan fell asleep and coming back in the early hours of the morning. One weekend he didn’t come home at all, texting Isabelle and asking if she could take care of Ryan, saying he would make it up to her. She responded with a single “sure,” her blood boiling in her veins. She was pissed off for the rest of the weekend, didn’t say a single word to him until Tuesday.

But the holidays were coming closer, and things had to thaw at some point. Her parents were both flying in. Jackie, Jack, and Leven were coming over. Alex was inviting his mom and his siblings, although he said he wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to make it. It was going to be a full house, and they were going to need all of the beds that they could spare, which meant that Isabelle was going to have to open up her sister’s room for the first time.

“We have got to stop thinking of it as Madeline and Dayo’s house,” Alex told her as they stood outside the closed French doors. “It’s about time.”

“It’s never going to be time,” Isabelle said.

“You know what I mean.”

And she did. They had been there for six months, and even though they had kind of taken over, it still felt like she was tiptoeing around. She didn’t leave dishes in the sink or papers out on the desk or her winter boots out on the mat. The only place she made a mess was her bedroom with the attached bathroom because that had always been her space, even when Madeline and Dayo owned the house.

She remembered when they bought this house. She had been the one to go to the open house with Madeline because Dayo had to work on a Saturday for some reason. Madeline fell in love with it immediately: the glass walls and ceiling of the living room, the giant study with the floor to ceiling bookshelves, the master bedroom with the Jacuzzi tub and the rain shower and the heated floors, the window seats in all of the bedrooms, the sauna and wet bar in the basement. The backyard was huge, which was a plus because the two of them wanted a whole mess of kids. The garage was big enough for three cars plus the motorcycle that Dayo desperately wanted. The whole house was full of light and warmth; it seemed like the perfect place to start a family.

Madeline called Dayo on the spot, asking him if they could put in an offer. When he agreed, their realtor gave a number right then and there. A month later, they were closing, and the next day Isabelle was hauling all of their stuff out of their apartment and up the winding driveway, complaining all the while that the front gate was too narrow to let the Uhaul through.

And now it was hers. Theirs.

“Are you ready?” Alex asked, looking over at her. The house was warm and full of the smell of the gingerbread in the oven. Ryan was running up and down the back hallway, Leven chasing her back and forth and getting tired out very quickly. Isabelle could hear Ryan screeching at Leven, giggling uncontrollably as she outran her. Isabelle shook her head so Alex waited, reaching over to take her hand. When he did, goosebumps crawled all the way up her arm to her shoulder, and she held on tight. After another minute, he spoke again. “Are you ready now?”

Deep breath. “Yep.”

He waited for her to reach over and pull the door handle down with a click, pushing the doors so that they opened wide in front of them, receiving them into the room. It smelled a little musty from being closed up for so long, but it looked exactly the same. The quilt that they got from Dayo’s family in Nigeria for their wedding was still folded over the foot of the bed. The clothes that Madeline had decided not to pack for their trip to Seattle were still piled on the bed. The book she was reading was still on her nightstand, a stack of legal documents on Dayo’s.

Isabelle’s legs gave out, and she sank down to the thick carpet. It felt like losing her sister all over again. She was trying to keep herself from crying, although she had cried in front of Alex so many times at this point that it really didn’t matter, when Ryan came flying at her. Isabelle barely managed to catch her when Ryan jumped into her arms, falling sideways until Alex grabbed her, holding them both up.

“Crying?” Ryan asked. Even in the last six months, her speech had gotten a whole lot more clear, although she rarely spoke in full sentences, choosing to get her point across with just a couple of words.

“No,” Isabelle said, sucking in a shaky breath. “No, I’m not crying.”

Ryan put her hot little hand on Isabelle’s cheek. “It’s okay, mama.”

Isabelle froze, and she could tell that Alex did too. Back in August, they had gotten wine drunk after putting Ryan to bed. It was Madeline’s birthday, and they were both struggling to keep it together. After a couple of glasses (or four), they talked about what they would tell Ryan when she got old enough to realize, to ask questions, to be confused. They had decided that as soon as she could understand, they would tell her exactly what happened. They had not considered this possibility.

“I… uh…” Isabelle looked at Alex helplessly, hoping that he would be better prepared than she was. He wasn’t. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

Leven came around the corner, out of breath. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, coming over to pick Ryan up. “She got away from me.” She was starting to walk away when she looked back at the two of them. “Are y’all okay? You look like you’ve-”

“Seen a ghost,” Alex finished. All of the color had drained out of his face, and they were both still sitting on the ground. Isabelle’s arms felt empty without Ryan in them, and she was convinced that she wouldn’t be able to stand up by herself. Leven put Ryan down, seeing the open door to Madeline and Dayo’s room, and she came over to Alex and Isabelle, kneeling down next to them and putting a hand on Isabelle’s shoulder.

“You guys,” Leven said, keeping her voice low so that Ryan wouldn’t be able to hear her. “Are you gonna be okay? I can get the room ready if you want.”

“No,” Alex said quickly. “We’ve got it.”

“Thanks, Lev,” Isabelle managed to say, squeezing her hand.

Leven disappeared down the hallway with Ryan, leaving Alex and Isabelle to confront their ghosts by themselves. It took them a little while, but finally they made it into the bedroom, shutting the doors behind them. “Well.” Alex looked around, sitting down on one of the big stuffed chairs by the fireplace. “That was… something.”

“We should’ve known this was going to happen.” Isabelle couldn’t sit down, pacing back and forth in front of him. “We should’ve talked about it.”

“We did talk about it.” Alex fiddled with the remote for the fireplace, turning it on so that flames whooshed up with a gasp of air and the faint smell of dust.

“Months ago. In passing. While we were drinking.”

“I didn’t think it would come up so soon.” He sat back, throwing his arms over the legs of the chair, just like he had that day in his office. It seemed like so long ago, and at the same time it seemed like it had only been a moment. “She’s one, for fuck’s sake.”

“I know.” Isabelle finally stilled, letting out a big huff of breath. “But what are we supposed to do?”

“Come here.”

“What?”

“Come here, Izzie.” She went over to him, not sure what to do, and when she got close enough he pulled her down into his lap. The chair was big enough to hold them both, but she was pressed up against his chest, her cheeks burning red instantly just from having him touch her. “Listen,” he said, clearly not as flustered as she was by the fact that this was the closest they had ever been to each other. She focused hard, trying to look him in the eye. “We don’t have to have it all figured out. Okay? We’ll keep doing the best we can with what we’ve been given, and when we don’t have the answer to something we’ll fake it until we do.”

She was very aware of how many places he was touching her. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just… it’s a lot. It’s so much.”

“It is,” Alex agreed. “But we have each other. We’ll always have each other.” He ran his hands up Isabelle’s back, spreading them over her spine, and she tentatively wound her arms around his neck. He hugged her, his breath falling over her neck, holding her tight. “It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured, his voice muffled in her neck. “I promise.”

Slowly, the longer they sat there, she felt herself start to relax. “Okay,” she said softly. “As long as you promise.”

✨✨✨

“I have to talk to you,” Jackie hissed, yanking Isabelle and Leven into the kitchen, all three of them damn near falling in a heap when Jackie slipped on the freshly mopped floor.

“Ow!” Isabelle rubbed her arm, glaring at her. “It’s Christmas, Jackie! Ease up!”

It was Christmas day, and their house was full of people. Isabelle’s dad was in the living room watching football with Jack and Alex and Alex’s sister Natalie, the only one of the Ludwigs who had been able to make it. Her mom was trying to keep Ryan from ripping all of the ornaments off the tree. And Isabelle was in the kitchen with her two best friends, being interrogated.

“You and Alex.” Jackie cut right to the chase. “What’s going on there?”

“We’re…” Isabelle tilted her head, confused by the question. “Just living? I don’t know. What the fuck are you asking?”

“You’ve hooked up, right?”

“What?” The word came out as a screech. “No!”

“I fucking told you!” Jackie stomped her foot - actually stomped her foot - and whipped around to face Leven, who was leaning up against the kitchen island, examining a non-existent split end.

“I didn’t say it,” she said nonchalantly, looking up at Jackie from underneath a curtain of long blonde hair. “Jack did.”

“What?” Isabelle turned to Leven. “Jack said what?”

“That there was no way y’all aren’t sleeping together.” Leven hopped up on the counter, arranging her dress around her. “I said that you weren’t, and since you’re not, he owes me fifty bucks.”

“Could you all stop betting on our lives? It’s getting out of hand.”

“What’s all the yelling about?” Alex appeared in the doorway. They all whipped around towards him. “You three look really suspicious. What the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” Leven crossed her legs, grabbing a piece of licorice out of the candy jar on the island and tapping it against her mouth. “Why don’t you tell us?”

“What?”

“Get out, Alex!” Isabelle said, desperate for him to leave the room so they could finish this conversation.

He was laughing even as she shoved him out of the room, making sure he was back in the living room before she turned back to her friends.

“You two are on drugs.”

“So you’re not sleeping together.”

“No! Why would you think that?”

“Um…” Leven took a big bite of licorice. “Have you seen the two of you together? He looks at you like he wants to take your clothes off.”

Isabelle felt her face flush bright red. “Shut the fuck up. No, he does not.”

Jackie snorted. “Um. Okay. Because he does. But it’s also like…” She trailed off, twisting a chunk of bright red hair between her fingers.

“What?” Isabelle snapped.

“Lev, help me out.”

“It’s like whenever the two of you are in a room together, his entire world shifts so that it revolves around you instead of the sun, you know? Like you’re a real family.”

Isabelle was saved from having to unpack that statement when Ryan came flying into the kitchen, jumping up into her arms. Alex was right behind her, and he looked out of breath. She was going to run them all into the ground if the pace that she had been moving at continued, like she was living her life with her tiny little finger on the fast forward button. At some point, she would get tired, Isabelle figured. She didn’t know what she would do if that didn’t happen.

A lot of things in her life were question marks at this point, not the least of which was her relationship with Alex. Or non-relationship, you might say. After they had had their little breakdown in the master bedroom, he had apologized to her for their fight and for the fact that he hadn’t been around as much. But he still disappeared in the middle of the night sometimes, and every time she heard that front door shut quietly behind him, she couldn’t stop picturing him going over to Kristy’s, getting away from here, moving on with his life while she sat just as still as she had for the last five years.

But things were better between them. He took a giggling Ryan out of her arms, scolding her good-naturedly for running off, and when his eyes met hers she immediately remembered Leven’s words and had to look away to hide whatever the hell was playing across her face.

They had dinner around the giant dining room table, the first time they had used it since Ryan’s first birthday. They watched her open presents, the fire crackling behind the tree and filling the room with warmth. They made hot chocolate and fought over who could fit the most mini marshmallows in their mouth. (Leven won, which was shocking to no one. “Lev, you have the biggest mouth of anyone I’ve ever met. Hands down.”) After they put Ryan to bed, they flipped through the channels until they found a Harry Potter marathon, and they all fell asleep on the couches, sprawled across each other.

Isabelle woke up around two in the morning because all of a sudden she was really cold. The fire had gone out hours ago but there was a giant down blanket on top of her, Leven curled up around her legs, and it took her a few moments to realize that Alex, who had been passed out practically underneath her, was gone. She sat up, her mind immediately jumping to Ryan, and she inched her way out from underneath Leven who was snoring quietly.

She was almost halfway up the sprawling wide staircase when she saw Alex outside on the second floor balcony outside the library, directly in the center of the house. It was snowing softly, not the disgusting wet kind that usually came around in February but the perfect Christmas snow, soft and light and sparkling under the light of the moon. Once she had poked her head into Ryan’s room to make sure she was sleeping soundly, she eased her way into the library and out onto the balcony, not bothering to turn any lights on behind her.

It seemed almost like he had been waiting for her, turning towards her as she shut the glass doors quietly behind her with a click. “Hey,” she said, her voice sounding too loud in the stillness of the night. “What are you doing? It’s freezing out here.”

Alex was leaning on the balcony, looking out at the sprawling backyard and the sky cluttered with stars and the moon hanging so high above them like one of the ornaments on their tree. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just… You know how I am about snow. I wanted to see it.”

He was crazy about snow. Before Madeline and Dayo died, before they had Leven, he went to Colorado every December to go skiing, sometimes making a second trip in February over President’s Day weekend. He wasn’t doing that this year, she knew. “I know,” she said, coming up next to him. “But it’s fucking freezing out here.”

She had barely gotten the words out before he had draped an arm warm over her shoulders, pulling her against his side. He was giving off warmth like a space heater, always running at a high temperature. She cuddled into his side, trying once again to forget what Leven and Jackie had been saying in the kitchen before dinner. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Beautiful,” Alex said, but when she looked up at him he wasn’t looking at the snow; he was looking right at her.

“I… uh…” She didn’t know what to say or where to look or what to do with her hands.

“I’ve got something for you,” Alex said, pulling back just enough so that he could slip his hand into the pocket of his sweatshirt, coming out with a tiny velvet box.

“Alex!” Her mouth dropped open. “We said we weren’t doing presents for each other!”

He shrugged, flashing a smile at her. “I lied.” He held it out to her. “I’m sorry it’s not more.”

But when she opened it up, saw three diamonds flashing up at her, she knew it was more than enough. “Holy shit, Alex. It’s…”

“It’s you and me and Ryan,” he said quickly. “That’s why they are three.”

She swallowed around the lump in her throat, not trusting herself to speak. “It’s gorgeous.” She lifted it up towards him. “Can you…?”

The skin on her neck popped into goosebumps when he gently lifted up her hair, pushing it to one side so that he could put the necklace around her neck. She felt his warm breath on the back of her neck as he leaned closer, trying to work the tiny clasp. “There,” he said after a few moments that felt like years. “All set. Let me see.”

She turned back towards him, not at all cold even though the temperature had to be in the teens, the heat from his gaze warming her up thoroughly. “Thank you, Alex.” She reached out, lacing her fingers through his, and he squeezed her hand. “Seriously.”

“It looks great on you,” he said softly, reaching up with his free hand to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. It was very late (or early, depending on how you looked at it), and she was very tired, and things had been surreal for months now, so she didn’t know if she was imagining things, but it seemed like suddenly Alex was getting closer, close enough for her to see the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes and the flecks of gold in his eyes and the dusting of blonde hair on his cheeks. She was just starting to close her eyes when the baby monitor in Alex’s pocket went off, and they both jerked back, the moment broken. “I… uh…” Alex looked flustered, pulling it out of his pocket and rubbing the back of his neck, dropping Isabelle’s hand. “I think it’s my turn.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Okay.” He took one last look at her before he went back into the library, disappearing down the hallway into the darkness.

She fell asleep that night wondering what it would be like to kiss Alex, wondering what on earth was happening with his girlfriend, wondering where their lives were going and what was sitting out in front of them in the dark. She wondered when her life was really going to begin.

She was in a pretty good mood the next morning, her diamond necklace the first thing she saw when she looked in the mirror. She started thinking about whether she could get Alex alone, whether they should have the conversation that had been running through her brain for weeks (or months, if she was being honest with herself). And then Jackie came in and dropped a bomb on her.

“So I ran into Nicky,” she said casually, just as Isabelle was taking a giant sip of coffee. She promptly spit it out all over the counter.

“What?”

Jackie grabbed a paper towel from the roll by the sink, letting it float down over the drops of coffee. “Yeah. At Whole Foods.”

“Of course,” Isabelle said, rolling her eyes. “Well, I hope you told him to fuck right off.”

“See, here’s the thing.” Jackie sounded nervous, and Isabelle whipped her head up, willing her best friend not to say what she was about to say. “I accidentally invited him to the New Year’s Eve party?”

“You did what?” Isabelle screeched.

“It was an accident, I swear! He was asking about you and saying he was sorry about Mads and he said he wanted to see you and I had already mentioned that everyone was in town until after New Year’s Eve because we were having a big thing and I…” She trailed off. “I’m so so sorry.”

Nicky was Isabelle’s ex-fiance, and while he was responsible for some of the best moments of her life, he had also been a part of some of the worst. He had been her high school sweetheart; his house was in between Jackie’s and Isabelle’s, which was absolutely a metaphor for how many times he got between them. (Jackie was three years older than Isabelle, so she had missed the majority of their high school relationship, but she was not a fan. Never had been, which was why it was even more shocking that she was the reason Isabelle was going to have to face him.) Isabelle and Nicky had dated all through high school and college and into law school, and by the time they broke up, they had been a part of each other’s lives for so long that Isabelle genuinely didn’t remember anything else.

Nothing about their relationship was exciting; it was all pretty predictable. He proposed on the day she graduated college, and she said yes because she couldn’t see her life going any differently. They would get married after she finished her first year of law school and after she graduated and passed the bar they would look for a house in the suburbs and pop out a couple of kids and maybe in a few years Isabelle would give up her practice and stay at home full time. At least that was Nicky’s plan.

Isabelle knew from the beginning that that was not what she wanted. She wanted to work and travel and have experiences, all things that she hadn’t done since she had gone straight from high school to higher education with no breaks in between. By the time she graduated law school, she was looking back at twenty years of continuous schooling, and that was a prospect that scared the hell out of her. She hadn’t done anything. She hadn’t lived yet.

So she started talking to Nicky about maybe taking a summer to go to Europe instead of getting married right away. She started voicing her opinions about how many kids she wanted and where she wanted to work and where she wanted her career to go. But it seemed like the more she talked, the quieter Nicky got, until he basically just shut down. Everything came to a head one night when he told her that he didn’t recognize her anymore, that she wasn’t the person who he wanted to marry. Silently, Isabelle thought that it was a really good fucking thing that she wasn’t the same person she had been when she was fifteen and they were just high schoolers messing around and not thinking about the future, but she didn’t say any of that. There was no point.

He broke up with her, and twenty-four hours later she was moving out of her apartment and in with Jackie, who was just finishing up at Columbia Med.

Here they were, a few years later, and ever since Madeline and Dayo had died Isabelle hadn’t really thought about Nicky. Especially lately with Alex so close to her all the time. They hadn’t spoken once since he had broken up with her. She had no idea if he had come to the funeral, that entire day and week and month a total blur when she looked back on it.

“So… he’s coming?”

“I don’t know.” Jackie looked pained to even have to say the words. “He mentioned stopping by. Iz, seriously, I am so so so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said, not meeting Jackie’s eyes as she wiped up the spilled coffee, crumpling the paper towel up in her fist. “It’ll all be okay.”

✨✨✨

“Tell me what you want from me, Izzie.” Alex was sitting at the kitchen table, twisting tops off of baby food jars and smelling them. Isabelle had dared him to try at least three of them, and he was taking the challenge very seriously. “Do you want me to bounce him at the door? Because I can hit him with the biggest block you’ve ever seen. I played football in college. Just say the word.”

Alex had known of the existence of Nicky, but Isabelle had said little to nothing about him. She had told him that Nicky might be stopping by the party, and a little part of her was disappointed when he didn’t immediately tell her that he was in love with her. Jackie and Leven had really gotten in her head.

“I don’t know what I want.” She sighed, reaching across the kitchen table and grabbing a Meat and Potatoes jar, taking a sniff. “This smells disgusting. You’re definitely trying this one.”

“Come on, Izzie,” he said with a grin. “Don’t you love me?”

She didn’t even justify that with a response. “There’s gonna be a ton of people here,” she said, pulling another jar towards her. “Even if he does come, I‘m sure I won’t even see him.”

Alex stuck his tongue out her, covered in Spinach and Apple. “Don’t worry,” he said, wiping some off his lip. “I got your back.”

New Year’s Eve rolled around; Alex and Isabelle had spent hours cleaning and putting Ryan’s toys away and making food. Jackie was bringing alcohol; Leven was bringing “more mini cupcakes than you have ever seen in your life, Iz.” All three of Alex’s siblings were coming. He had taken Ryan to his mom’s to stay the night. By the time the party was in full swing at ten o’clock, there were more people packed into the house than Isabelle had ever seen, so many people that it almost made the house look small.

And yet, the first person Isabelle saw when she came downstairs was Kristy. She hadn’t seen her since Ryan’s first birthday party, except for the brief moment that she had appeared at Alex’s door at his office. He never talked about her; she assumed that they were still dating based on how many nights he disappeared, but she didn’t know for sure until she saw the two of them standing by the side door. Alex had his hand planted on the doorframe behind her head, and he was leaning close to her as she said something into his ear. Isabelle might have stood there frozen all night if Jackie hadn’t seen her and yanked her into the kitchen.

“You’re staring.”

“Am not.”

“You know what your New Year’s resolution should be? Not denying your feelings for your roommate slash baby daddy anymore.”

“Yeah, well, yours should be not running into my ex-fiance at a Whole Foods and inviting him over!”

She was cranky and she knew it was because of the Kristy sighting. So the last person she wanted to see when she turned around was Nicky. But there he was, leaning up against the kitchen island like this was his house, like he had been here before. His hair was bleached almost white, but the scruff running along his chin was dark brown. He was not the same person she had spent damn near a decade with.

“See ya,” Jackie muttered under her breath, taking off before Isabelle could grab her arm to stop her. Isabelle was going to kill her later.

“Hey, Belle,” Nicky said, and hearing her nickname come out of his mouth flooded her mind with all the memories that they had made over the course of their relationship, reminding her that it was not, in fact, all bad. In fact, a lot of it was pretty good.

“Hey,” she said, forcing the word out. “How are you?” It seemed like such an inadequate question to ask someone who hadn’t seen in three and a half years, especially not when that person was someone who you thought you would spend the rest of your life with.

“I’m good,” he said. “I’ve missed you.” It was a clearer statement than she had ever heard Nicky say in the nine years that they were together. “And I’m really sorry about Madeline.”

She didn’t want to talk about Madeline, not now with all these people in the house and an entire night in front of her that she would probably have to fight to get through. But it meant something to her that he brought it up. “Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “Seriously.”

The longer she talked to him, the easier it got; there was a hell of a lot for them to catch up on, and they ended up on one of the big overstuffed sofas in the living room next to the Christmas tree, which Alex had refused to let Isabelle take down. Jackie finally joined them, apparently putting aside her distaste for Nicky for the time being. At one point, Isabelle looked behind Nicky to see Alex standing over by the bar cart, pouring himself a drink and looking right at her. When she caught his eye, he gestured for her to come over with a nod of his head.

“I’ll be right back,” Isabelle said, pushing herself up from where she had been sandwiched between Nicky and Jackie.

Isabelle hadn’t had anything to drink; between Nicky showing up and what Leven and Jackie had said to her and the moment she had had with Alex out on the balcony, she was reeling and figured it was best not to put herself in a situation where she might say all of the things she was secretly thinking. Alex, on the other hand, was bombed.

“Izzie!” he said as she came up to him. Kristy was nowhere in sight, and Isabelle wondered if she had left or if she was just lurking around the corner somewhere. He was wearing a light blue t-shirt that made his eyes seem even brighter and jeans that Isabelle knew were crazy expensive and crazy soft because she had sat next to him on the couch every night for months watching television, her leg so close to his that if he moved a muscle he brushed up against her. “You look really pretty.”

“Stop.”

“Seriously.” He put his hand on her shoulder, his fingers brushing her neck as he curled it underneath her hair. “You do.” He lifted up her necklace with the other hand. “You’re wearing this.”

“I am,” she said, reflexively reaching for it, her fingers brushing against his and sending electricity shooting through her arm as she curled her fingers around the diamonds. “I haven’t taken it off since you gave it to me.”

A big smile lit up his face, and her heart stopped as he moved his hand from the back of her neck to her face, gently rubbing her cheek with his thumb. She grabbed his wrist, thanking God that he was drunk; it meant that she could tell herself that he was only saying these things and touching her like this because he wasn’t going to remember tomorrow.

“So,” he said, looking over her shoulder at Nicky, his eyes narrowing. “How’s it going over there?”

She shrugged. She didn’t want to go back to Nicky honestly; she wanted to stand right here with Alex for the rest of the night. She wanted him to be the person she kissed at midnight. But then she saw Kristy emerge from the kitchen, winding her way through the crowd of people, a cocktail napkin in one hand and a martini in the other. “It’s okay,” she said quickly, pulling back from him to put a few inches of space between them. “You know.”

“You want me to come over there and run interference?”

More than anything, Isabelle wanted to say yes, please, you’re the one I want to be with, but she kept her mouth shut. “It’s okay,” she said again. “I’ve got Jackie there to handle it.”

“That’s true,” Alex said as Kristy reached them, putting an arm around his waist. He draped an arm over her shoulder casually, but he was still looking at Isabelle as he spoke. “She’s the only one I trust to take care of you. Other than me obviously.”

Isabelle didn’t know what to say to that, so she just tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, her face still burning from where Alex had touched her. “Okay.” She backed up a couple of steps. “I’ll see you.”

“See you.” Alex winked at her as she went back over to the couch. When she sat down again between Nicky and Jackie and looked up at him, he was still looking at her, and there was an expression on his face that she couldn’t read.

She didn’t end up kissing anyone at midnight, choosing instead to stick close to Leven, who left a big, sticky, lip gloss print on her cheek. Nicky left around one o’clock, but not before asking if he could call her, maybe take her to dinner so they could have a couple of quiet hours to catch up. Alex was the first thing that flashed into her brain when he asked, but the thought of Kristy followed quickly, and she ended up saying yes.

She fell into bed a little after three, trying not to think about the fact that she was going to have to start the new year by cleaning the entire house. She was just starting to drift off when there was a knock at her door, and she sat up quickly, startled, her heart pounding fast. She thought everyone was gone, vaguely remembered in her tired haze that Alex had pushed the last people out the door around two thirty. She escaped upstairs quickly before she could see whether or not Kristy stayed.

“H - hello?” Isabelle said tentatively.

“Izzie, it’s me.” Alex’s voice was warm and close, like he had his entire face pressed up to the door, which (knowing him) he probably did. “Can I come in?”

She looked around frantically, well aware that she was only wearing a big Princeton t-shirt that she had stolen out of Alex’s laundry at some point. There were no shorts or yoga pants or sweatpants anywhere within reach (god damn Jackie for forcing her to clean her room), so she just pulled the blankets up to her chin. “Yeah.”

He cracked the door open, sticking his head in. “Do you have clothes on?”

“Why on earth would I tell you to come in if I didn’t have clothes on?”

“So you do.”

“Yes.”

“Shame,” he said, his smile lighting up the room, and holy shit she was glad it was dark.

“What is it that you need, Alex?”

“I’m lonely,” he said, pouting at her. “It’s weird without Ryan here, and it’s New Years and all. Can I sit with you for a little bit?”

“It’s three in the morning,” she said, her heart pounding fast. She didn’t want to tell him how many nights she had felt the same thing, how many hours she had spent sitting up and trying to hear even the tiniest noise of the front door opening, how often she had wondered where he was and what he did when he left in the middle of the night.

“Come on, Izzie.”

“Okay.” She relented, knowing that she was going to say yes to him sooner or later. She just couldn’t help herself.

She figured Kristy had left because Alex fell asleep next to her that night, rolling over in his sleep and anchoring her under the weight of his arm. She stayed awake for about a half an hour, trying desperately not to move and wake him up. She could get used to this, she thought as she felt her eyelids start to get heavy, and finally she drifted off with his warm breath against her neck and the smell of him surrounding her like a blanket.

✨✨✨

“Twenty-eight, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“I mean… that’s really old.”

“Alex. You’re almost thirty-one.”

“Yes, but I look twenty-six.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I don’t know, Izzie.” Alex raised his eyebrows at her. “You tell me.”

They were in the backyard with Ryan, the snow so high that it could practically bury her. Isabelle was sitting with her on the porch while Alex knelt on the steps, making snowball after snowball and handing them to Ryan. They had only been out there for about ten minutes, bundled up in snow pants and winter coats and gloves and boots and hats, and underneath all of it Isabelle was sweating a little.

She reached down and plucked a snowball from the pile next to Ryan, throwing it at Alex and hitting him right in the chest. “Oh, Izzie.” He looked down at his coat and then up at her. “You really want to start that?”

“Alex, don’t,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry, I-”

Before she could grab Ryan and scramble inside, he was up on the porch, dragging her down into the giant snow bank. There was snow up the back of her jacket and in her hair and packed into her boots, and she could hear Ryan laughing from the porch. “Alex,” she whined from underneath him. He was sprawled across her, heavy and warm and solid. She pushed against him ineffectively. “Move!”

“No.” He rolled over so that he was right on top of her, pinning her wrists down next to her head. “Not a chance.”

He was so close to her, his eyes bright blue and his cheeks flushed red and his hair sticking up in the front where his hat had slipped back. She could see the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes, just like she had on Christmas when they were out on the balcony together, and she could feel the necklace he gave her burning up against her chest underneath her five layers of clothes.

They had had a couple of moments like this one since the first time on Christmas. There had been the one at the New Year’s Eve party. There had been the one after the party when he had crawled into her bed and held her in his sleep. Ever since then he had been home more, putting Ryan to bed every night and then sprawling across Isabelle’s bed with a fresh contract and a pen, making marks and crossing things out and scribbling in the margins. She had gotten used to having him around again, not running out the door at all hours of the night.

And then there had been a moment just a week ago on Valentine’s Day; she had expected him to be gone, out on a date with Kristy, but instead they holed up in the living room with a box of chocolates that Alex had gotten from Dean & DeLuca, the fire going and Grey’s Anatomy playing on the television.

“This is unrealistic,” Alex said, tossing a chocolate up in the air and catching it in his mouth.

“What do you mean?”

He spoke with his mouth full, his words coming out in a mumble. “You’re telling me that Alex stayed with Izzie the entire time she had cancer and then she just leaves him? For no discernible reason?”

“Well…” Isabelle reached over to the box on Alex’s lap and picking out a chocolate, examining it and trying to see if it was coconut, which she absolutely hated. “She thought that he got her fired.”

“Well, he didn’t!” Alex grabbed the chocolate out of her hand and biting it in half, looking inside. “Caramel. You’re good.” He handed it back to her. “And if they just communicated for, like, two fucking seconds, maybe they wouldn’t be getting a divorce.”

Isabelle stuck the chocolate in her mouth; they were far past the point of caring about each other’s germs. “You think?”

“I guess.” Alex shoved the box of chocolates towards the end of the couch, draping an arm around Isabelle’s shoulder and pulling her into his side. Lately he had been touching her more, casually like it didn’t make her heart beat fast every time. “If I had someone I cared about that much… I don’t know. I can’t imagine that I would let go.”

Isabelle immediately fixated on the “if” that he had thrown in there, which made it sound like he didn’t have that with Kristy. “Yeah,” she said, her voice catching. “Same here.”

“So you didn’t have that?” Alex looked down at her, pinning her down with her gaze. “With Nicky?”

“No,” she said quickly. They hadn’t talked about Nicky after the party on New Year’s Eve, although she had gone to dinner with him like they had talked about. They ended the night on good terms, but it just further reinforced to Isabelle why they had broken up. They were entirely too different. And what she knew now was that with Alex around, getting close to her and touching her and making her think that he was going to kiss her, there would never be anyone else who could measure up. “No. It wasn’t like that.”

He didn’t break his gaze, and he was just pushing a piece of hair behind her ear when his phone rang. “Fuck,” he said, pulling back to look at it. “Fuck, I’ve gotta take this.”

He went into the kitchen, and she tried to focus on the television again, only able to hear his voice filtering faintly through the dining room and into the living room. He made her feel like she couldn’t breathe, and that scared the hell out of her. So she was pushing those feelings down, ignoring them as long as she could.

And now he was laying on top of her in the snow, once again pulling all the breath from her lungs just by looking at her. “Get off, Alex,” she finally managed, giving him a huge shove. It didn’t do anything, but he pushed himself up to his feet, grinning down at her and holding out a hand for her to take. “You’re a child,” she said as he pulled her up.

“But you love me anyways.”

He had hot chocolate with Ryan in the kitchen while she went upstairs and took a really long, really hot shower. When she finally came back down, they resumed their conversation about her birthday. “So what do you want to do?” he asked, pushing a mug of hot chocolate towards her, the top dotted with mini marshmallows just the way she liked it.

“Nothing,” she said. “I thought we could just have Jackie and Jack and Lev over and just… I don’t know. Hang out. Watch movies. Play Charades.”

“You want to play Charades?”

“It’s just a suggestion, Alex.”

“I’m just saying. I am the King of Charades. So I don’t think you know what you are getting yourself into.”

“You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Over the next week, Alex became more and more insistent that this needed to be a big deal, that twenty-eight was a milestone and Isabelle needed to celebrate it correctly. “You’re almost thirty after all,” he kept saying, earning himself a glare every time he did so. So by the time of twenty-fifth of February had rolled around, he had planned an entire evening, complete with reservations at The Grill in Midtown East and after-dinner drinks at The Monkey Bar and a party bus back to the house where there was going to be an apparent rager with a giant guest list. Just like New Year’s Eve, Alex took Ryan over to his mom’s, but unlike New Year’s Eve, Kristy was not on the guest list. And even though Isabelle had decided at the last second to extend an invitation to Nicky in the hopes that someday they could be friends (he had been a big part of her life after all), she was also hoping that maybe, just maybe, something was about to happen between her and Alex.

The night started off great. They got all dressed up, Alex coming into Isabelle’s room as she was getting dressed to ask her which tie he should wear. She barely got her dress pulled down in time before he came barging in; he had given up knocking somewhere around Valentine’s Day. She smoothed her dress down over her thighs, wondering whether it looked as tight as it felt. “Woah,” he said, stopping in his tracks, a tie slung over each shoulder. “You look hot.”

She blushed bright red. “You think?”

“Well, now I need to step it up.” He held the ties out to her. “Which one?” She picked the gold one, knowing that it would look good against the navy suit that he was wearing. “Thanks, Izzie,” he said, throwing the other one on her bed, and before he looked down to tie his tie, she thought she caught a glimpse of his eyes sweeping up and down her.

Just then, Isabelle heard the front door open, knew that Jackie and Jack and Leven were here and ready to go. “Oh my God!” Jackie squealed as Isabelle came down the stairs, shoes in hand. “You look great!”

“You look great,” Isabelle said as she jumped down the last step, leaning on the banister to put her shoes on. “Both of you.”

“Hey!” Jack was helping Jackie take her coat off, draping it over his arm. “What about me?”

Isabelle snorted. “You look good too, Jack.”

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Leven asked brightly.

“Lev! Shut up!”

“Wait what?” Jack whipped around to face Isabelle. “You and Alex? Are you finally dating?”

“What do you mean finally?”

“I mean, like…” He looked to Leven and Jackie for help. “It’s about time.”

“We’re not dating,” she hissed, pushing him into the kitchen and away from the stairs. “Now keep it down.”

“Well, could you?” Jack mumbled. “Because I’m losing out on money here.”

“Then stop betting!”

A few minutes later, Alex came downstairs, went straight to the bar cart to grab shot glasses and a bottle of Stoli that made Isabelle want to throw up just looking at it. He lined them up on the kitchen counter, filling each one up almost to the brim and passing them out. When he handed Isabelle her glass, his fingers brushed hers, and he winked at her across the island. She was very aware of the fact that everyone in this room except for Alex thought that the two of them were together (or should be together or were sleeping together or some ridiculous iteration of the aforementioned), and she looked down quickly.

Alex sat right next to her at dinner, and the more martinis she had the more she started to forget what her friends had been saying to her for months, or maybe she just stopped caring. In the dimness of the restaurant with the fancy tablecloths and candles flickering around them and more forks than she knew what to do with, she found herself getting closer and closer to Alex until his leg was pressed up against hers under the table.

At one point she looked over at him, his eyes lit up by the candle flickering in front of them, and she thought that he was about to say something. His arm was draped over the back of her chair, and he was close enough for her to actually see the flame of the candle reflected in his eyes, but the moment was broken when their waiter brought out a giant cake with a sparkler spitting fire, and Alex just grinned at her.

“Happy birthday, Izzie,” he said, pulling it closer to her with no regard for the fact that her hair might catch on fire. “Make a wish!”

Jackie was on her other side, and she reached over and grabbed Isabelle’s hand. Isabelle shut her eyes, thinking that she deserved a couple of extra wishes for everything that life had thrown at her over the past year. So she wished for everything she could think of: that she would raise Ryan to be a really fucking good person just like her mom had been, that she wouldn’t let down all of the people who counted on her, that she would get her own life together. And she didn’t make a conscious effort to dedicate a wish to  
Alex, but as she was running through what she wanted for the next year of her life, he was at the top of her list.

When she opened her eyes and blew out the candle, everyone was looking at her and smiling and clapping, and her heart was so full that she thought it could burst.

They went out to The Monkey Bar, had another couple of drinks, and by the time the party bus pulled up in front just long enough for all of them to jump in, Isabelle was buzzed. In fact, she would say that she was well on her way to being drunker than she had been since her twenty-seventh birthday. And any hesitation that she had about this being the night that she was going to tell Alex that she was, perhaps, completely in love with him went right out the window.

She was wobbling a little bit when she got onto the bus, the thought in the back of her mind that maybe she should’ve worn flats or boots or at least wedges. Someone was holding her tightly around the waist, keeping her upright, and as she slowly made her way up the stairs and into the bus, the lights flashing around them and the interior all velvet and chrome and lights bouncing around, she realized that it was Alex. Somehow, when they sat down, she ended up in his lap, her arm slung around his neck.

It took about an hour to get back to their house, and Alex didn’t let Isabelle touch a drop of alcohol the entire time, trying to sober her up as much as possible. She couldn’t focus on anything but him the entire time, even though she was pretty sure that Leven had found the stripper pole at the back of the bus and was challenging Jack to see who was better. With Alex’s arm warm around her waist and his face so close to hers, she spent the entirety of the ride trying to figure out how to engineer a way to get him alone.

The house was full when they got back to it, about fifty people already there and tapping kegs and setting up beer pong on the dining room table. Isabelle could just hear Madeline screaming about the mahogany in her head, but she was far past the point of being able to do anything about it.

She ended up in the kitchen with Leven and Jackie, entirely unsure of how she got there, but Jackie mothered her into drinking a glass of water. “You’re not going to be able to fully enjoy your birthday if you’re throwing up in the bathroom all night.”

“I beg to differ,” Isabelle said, her words coming out a little mushy. “I just think we should at least keep the option open.”

Leven cut right to the chase. “So what’s happening with you and Alex?”

“For the fiftieth time.” Isabelle steadied herself against the kitchen counter. People were trickling in and out; she had seen Nicky when she first came in, standing by the fireplace talking to Josh. Jen and Liam came flying into the kitchen, screaming something about needing more Solo cups. There was a girl in the corner by the Keurig who Isabelle vaguely recognized from her office but whose name she couldn’t place in her current state; she was crying to her friend, and Isabelle’s first thought was that it seemed a little early in the night to be at that place. “Nothing is happening.”

“Oh, please.” Leven rolled her eyes. “You practically jumped him right in front of all of us.”

“I did not!”

“Sure you did. On the bus.”

“Well.” The alcohol was definitely lowering her inhibitions. “I just really like him.”

“We know,” Jackie said insistently. “That’s what we’ve been saying. We all know. Except for you and Alex apparently.”

Isabelle watched the girl by the Keurig grab a paper towel from the roll next to the sink, wiping her eye son it and leaving behind a streak of mascara. “So what do I do?”

“Tell him,” Leven said firmly. “It’s time for the two of you to stop dancing around it and start your life together.”

“Okay.” Isabelle grabbed Jackie’s drink out of her hand, downing the last couple of sips.

“Wait, Iz! I didn’t mean right now!”

But Isabelle was already out of the kitchen, pushing past the crying girl and out into the dining room. She passed Jen and Liam who were getting their asses kicked at beer pong by Amandla and Willow. Nicky was nowhere to be seen, but Josh was still over by the fireplace, talking to Luca and AnnaSophia. And Alex was holding court in the middle of the living room, surrounded by a bunch of girls from Isabelle’s firm.

She stopped for a second, steadied herself on one of the pillars dividing the dining room and the living room. She was worried that if she took the step down she might completely eat shit in front of everyone. It gave her a second to watch Alex; he was telling a story - she could tell by how animated he was - and everyone was just as enraptured by his words as she usually was.

She didn’t realize he was calling to her until she saw him waving his arm at her. “Izzie!” he called over the heads of everyone in between them. “Izzie!”

She tried to move, but she couldn’t, which he must have realized because he came bounding over, a giant smile on his face. “Hey,” she managed when he settled right in front of her, resting his arm on the pillar next to her.

“Hey!” She thought, not for the first time, that he was basically a giant golden retriever, happy and energetic and desperate for everyone to love him as much as he loved them. “Are you having fun?”

“Loads,” she said. It felt like she was swaying sideways, and she blinked, shaking her head to clear it. She really should not have had those last couple of drinks at The Monkey Bar or that swig of Jackie’s drink in the kitchen. “Thank you for doing this.”

He reached out, steadying her; she could feel his hand spanning her waist. “Of course, Izzie,” he said, his voice soft and warm. For the first time since Madeline and Dayo had died, this felt like home, here with him and all of their friends. “Anything for you. You know that.”

“I want to talk to you,” she blurted out. “Away from all this.”

“Okay,” he said easily. “Can you make it upstairs?”

“If you help me.”

Isabelle took the stairs one at a time, taking care not to trip. Alex followed her up, his hand warm on her back, until they reached the top of the stairs and went one, two, three doorways down until they got to her room. Alex shut the door behind him, the noise from the party raging downstairs suddenly muffled, just some music and voices filtering through the crack beneath the door and disappearing into the plush carpet. She sat down on the edge of the bed, her head suddenly spinning.

“Are you okay, Izzie?” Alex sat down next to her. “Do you need water or something?”

“No,” she said. “I’m okay.” Alright, it was now or never. “I just… I need to say something.”

“Okay.” He was always so cool and unbothered by everything that it was impossible for her to read where he was at, especially right now. “Shoot.”

“I like you,” she blurted out. In her head, she had planned this all out, but it wasn’t coming out anything like she had planned. That was absolutely a metaphor for the rest of her life if she had ever heard one. She could not decipher what was going on in his eyes, but she had to push forward. “Like… as more than my roommate or friend or the person I’m raising Ryan with. I like you like you. And I want to be with you.”

It was in that moment that she suddenly remembered Kristy. Isabelle had spent so long trying to push even the thought of her away that she had completely forgotten about her. And she was hanging in the silence between them now.

“Isabelle.” The fact that Alex was using her full name instead of calling her Izzie hit her more than whatever was laced behind his words or the pause before his words. “I…” He considered his words carefully, so different from the Alex she knew who always knew what to say and what to do. “I don’t know what to say.”

Her blood ran cold, and she pulled away from him, yanking her leg out from underneath his hand. She pulled away so quickly, in fact, that she damn near toppled off the edge of the bed. “Okay.” She had to salvage this, but she had no idea how. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I-”

“It’s okay.” She didn’t know if it was the alcohol or the conversation or everything that had built up over the last eight months, but she thought she was going to cry. It would have been better if he had just said that he didn’t feel the same way. This whole vague thing that he was doing in order to protect her feelings was making it ten times worse. “Can I just have a minute?”

She didn’t think she was doing that thing where she told him to go while secretly wishing he would stay until he got up and she realized how much her heart hurt. “Isabelle.” He turned back towards her, and she really wished that he would stop saying her full name. “I’m sorry.”

It turns out that Alex apologizing was worse than Alex saying nothing. When the door shut behind him, she collapsed back onto her bed, closing her eyes. The room was spinning around her; all she wanted was a glass of water and an Advil, and then she wanted to crawl under her covers and cry until all the bad shit that had happened in the last year felt like nothing. But it was her birthday and her party and all of her friends downstairs. She knew she had to get up, but she just didn’t have it in her. And maybe if she had been having a good year, this would feel like nothing, but she wasn’t and it didn’t.

She knew that Jackie and Leven would be looking for her, but she couldn’t get herself to stand up (or even sit up for that matter). She stayed in her room for at least twenty minutes, just staring at the ceiling and refusing to check her phone when it buzzed with a text. Finally, the door cracked open, the sliver of light from the hallway backlighting whoever was standing there. The person was too tall to be Jackie or Leven, and Isabelle’s heart jumped because she thought for just a moment that it was Alex. But Alex’s shoulders were wider, and besides - he had Kristy. There was no need for him to come back in here after Isabelle embarrassed the hell out of herself.

“Belle.”

She sat up quickly. “Nicky?”

He came in, shutting the door behind him so that the only light in the room came from the moon filtering through the gauzy curtains over the windows and bathing everything in a muted blue. “I just wanted to check on you and see if you’re okay.”

She fell back against her pillows again, throwing her arm over her eyes with no thought to how long it had taken her to get her eyelashes curled. “I’m fine.”

He sat down next to her gingerly, pulling one leg up onto the bed. When she didn’t immediately push him off, he sat back against the pillows. “I used to know you really well, Belle. I know you’re not okay.”

Isabelle sighed heavily. He was right; if there was anyone who she would be incapable of hiding her true feelings from, it was Nicky. He had been there when she was trying to decide what college to go to even though she didn’t know her own butt from a hole in the ground, much less what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. He was there when she finally landed on law school, spent far too long studying for the LSAT, was almost buried to death under a mountain of reading her first year. He had seen her laugh and cry and break down and work harder than she thought was possible. And for a long time, he had been her number one supporter (until suddenly one day he wasn’t). He had been there.

That was probably why she did what she did, overcome by memories and broken hearts and hurt feelings and alcohol. She didn’t know why Nicky didn’t push her away, why he kissed her back. All she knew was that when he was moving inside her and she caught a flash of blonde hair through her closed eyes, her only thought was that he wasn’t the right person. They shouldn’t be doing this.

She was making a mistake.

✨✨✨

Alex wasn’t speaking to her, and she knew exactly why.

She jerked awake the morning (well… afternoon) after her birthday party because she’d had a dream that she was falling. When she rolled over and saw Nicky in bed next to her, still snoring softly, she felt like she actually was falling, her heart dropping into the pit of her stomach when she remembered what had happened the night before. She had gone for it, told Alex she wanted to be with him, and he hadn’t said a single goddamn word, save for an apology. And then she slept with Nicky.

Idiot.

She tried to sneak him out of the house, shaking him awake and throwing his clothes at him wordlessly. He attempted to have a conversation about it, but she just shook her head, hissing “not now, Nicky” at him before easing out into the hallway carefully. Alex’s door was open, but he wasn’t in there, and she didn’t hear anything from downstairs. Maybe he had left to go to his mom’s to pick up Ryan.

So she followed Nicky down the stairs, taking care to be as quiet as possible. And it looked like she was home free, opening the door and shoving him out. But when she took a deep breath and turned around, Alex was standing right there, his coat half on and his keys dangling from his hand.

There was no explaining her way out of this one.

“Isabelle,” he said, the same thing he had kept saying last night, but this time his tone was very different. There was no more apology, just incredulity and judgment and something else running underneath that she couldn’t put together. “Was that Nicky?”

Isabelle got defensive immediately. She wasn’t the one who had been completely fucking silent last night. “Yes. So?”

“So are you kidding me? I thought…” He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought it wasn’t like that,” he said, repeating what she had said to him on Valentine’s Day.

“It’s not.” She tried to make her voice as cold as possible. “It’s just sex, Alex. You should know about that. You do it all the time.”

She pushed past him, needed to make cheesy eggs before she threw up or her head split in half. He waited until she was all the way down the hallway, almost into the kitchen, before he said something. “Okay, Isabelle.” She turned around. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, just shrugging his coat on and concentrating really hard on zipping it up. “If that’s what you want.”

Of course it’s not, you fucking moron, she wanted to scream at him. But she didn’t. “It is.”

“Alright. I’m going to go get Ryan.”

The door slammed shut behind him.

And he had barely spoken to her since.

Not about Ryan. Not about work. Not about anything. By the time she left for work in the morning, he was already gone to take Ryan to daycare. He was working later and later; by the time he got home she had already fed Ryan dinner and was getting ready to put her to bed. Those hours after Ryan went to sleep were the worst; they existed in silence, moving around each other without saying anything, even if they were both eating dinner at the same table. Every once in a while, he would grunt at her to pass the salt or ask if Ryan needed her diaper changed, but that was the extent of the conversation.

And after nine months of living together and parenting together and drinking together and crying together, it was like a shock to the system.

The worst part was that Isabelle had no idea why he was acting like this. The only thing she could think of is that she had made things awkward, ruined the careful friendship that they had built over the years by taking one step too far and telling him how she really felt. There was no way that she could bridge the gap between them and bring it up, ask him how she could make it better, apologize, even though deep down those were all things she wanted to do. She just wasn’t brave enough.

So she settled for being mad at the world. She was mad at herself for what she did. She was mad at Alex for putting her in that position. She was mad at Jackie and Leven for putting the idea in her head. She was mad at Madeline and Dayo for not being here. And she was mad at Nicky, just for being Nicky.

Jackie and Leven came over the weekend after the party. They had no idea what had been going on. They had been texting Isabelle nonstop, asking if she had gone through with it and talked to Alex. She didn’t say anything about it, just telling them that she had gotten too drunk and gone upstairs to fall asleep. But she knew she would have to address it eventually. They would know as soon as they saw her and Alex together that something big had gone down.

So finally, she just told them. “It didn’t go well,” she said bluntly. They were sitting in chairs that they had pushed close to the fireplace, mugs of candy cane coffee left over from Christmas in hand.

“What does not so well mean?” God, Leven was such an attorney. Sometimes talking to her made Isabelle wonder if she also spoke to her friends like they were her clients.

Isabelle relayed the conversation to them. “It was quick. Because I told him that I like him as more than a friend, and I want to be with him. And he didn’t say anything.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.” Isabelle squinted, getting a headache just from thinking about that night. “He said my name a couple of times, and then he said he was sorry.”

“What?” Jackie snapped, slamming her mug down on the hearth of the fireplace, coffee sloshing over the sides and onto the polished marble. “He said he was sorry? For what?”

“I don’t know.” Isabelle swung her legs up over the side of the chair, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. “He just said he was sorry and then he walked out. I’m assuming because he doesn’t feel the same way but he was too nice to say it to my face. Especially when I was that drunk.”

“But he does feel the same way.” Leven shook her head, a long curtain of blonde hair falling over her shoulder. She brushed it away impatiently. “We all see how it looks at you.”

“Has he ever said anything?” Isabelle raised an eyebrow at her.

“Well… no.” Leven looked at Jackie. “Maybe he has to Jack?”

Jackie shrugged. “If he has, Jack hasn’t told me anything. You know how they are with their whole bro code thing.”

“Maybe you should talk to him again,” Leven suggested. Isabelle knew she had to tell them about Nicky.

They took it about as well as Alex had, although they each had a lot more to say.

“Everyone backslides once in a while,” Leven said weakly. Even Isabelle knew there was no justification.

“Not with Nicky!” Jackie shrieked. Isabelle was busy thanking God that Alex was out of the house. Once again, he had left without telling her where he was going, not that she was expecting anything from him at this point. He was more of a mystery to her than he had been on the night of their disastrous date when he had run out to meet another girl.

“I know.” Isabelle sat up, setting her cup down. “It was a mistake. I don’t need you to tell me that, believe me.”

“Does Nicky know it was a mistake?”

He had been texting and calling and sending flowers to her office, but she couldn’t deal. She didn’t want to deal. There was nothing in the cards for them; there had never been, and finally a couple of weeks after her birthday party, she told him so.

She was hiding out in the library. Ryan was in bed and Alex was downstairs in the office with the French doors closed so that he didn’t have to look at her. When Nicky’s name had popped up on her phone, she had seriously considered just declining the call, but enough was enough.

“You’ve been ignoring me,” Nicky said matter-of-factly as Isabelle shut the library door behind her quietly. Alex wouldn’t think to look for her in here. Not that he thought to look for her at all anymore.

“I have not,” she said, keeping her voice as low and quiet as possible. She sat down in one of the big overstuffed chairs in front of the bay window, the faint March light filtering through the clouds as best it could. “Listen, Nicky-”

“Uh oh.” He cut her off. “I know what that means.”

“What happened on my birthday was-”

“Good? Great? Life-changing?”

She snorted. “Unexpected. And probably a mistake.”

“Probably.” It wasn’t a question.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, curling the sleeve of her sweater around her knuckles. Alex was always warm; he gave off heat like the sun. She had gotten used to the thermostat being a few degrees colder than normal, even in the winter, wore big sweaters and thermals and thick socks around the house. “Definitely a mistake.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone until Nicky finally said, “Well. You might think so.”

“Well. It’s my life.”

Back in the day, when they had been together, Isabelle never had an opinion about anything. When she did finally start to speak up, Nicky broke up with her. Even now, they had never talked about why, but she knew that he liked being the one in control, the one who made decisions. She knew he wasn’t doing it to control her, but that was the effect, whether he liked it or not. She would be damned if she took a step back to who she had been in law school and college and high school. A lot had happened since that. She was a different Isabelle now.

She refused to let anyone speak for her anymore.

“Okay, Belle.” She couldn’t tell what he was thinking or what the tone in his voice meant. “I figured I might as well try.”

Even hours after they hung up, she kept replaying that sentence in her mind. Maybe Nicky was right. Maybe all she had to do was try.

✨✨✨

**spring**

A couple of weeks later, she finally did try.

It was April. The snow was finally starting to melt, flowers popping up in the backyard. Madeline had been nuts about her flowers, and if Isabelle was being honest, she had completely forgotten that they even existed. She was more preoccupied with the fact that for over a month, she and Alex had been tiptoeing around each other, and it was time to put an end to it.

Jackie had borrowed Ryan for one Saturday afternoon so that Isabelle could get some work done; with everything that had been going on over the last year or so, she had put her dreams of owning her own firm on the back burner, just trying to get through for the time being. And for the last few weeks, she had been getting a little behind. So Friday afternoon before she left her office to pick up Ryan, she packed up a bunch of files and texted Jackie, asking her if she would be willing to babysit. There was no guarantee that Alex would be around, and even if he was she certainly couldn’t ask him to do her a favor. Isabelle knew, in the back of her mind, that she was going to talk to Alex once Ryan was out of the house.

She found him in the office downstairs. That was where he did all of his work now; there was no more spreading things out at the kitchen table and bouncing ideas off of each other. She could see him through the glass French doors as she got closer; he was wearing a gray t-shirt that she knew was really soft because she used to swipe it from him all the time to wear to bed, and he had his glasses on, his head bent over his laptop and a frown on his face.

She had to steel herself first before she could knock on the door, but finally she did, two short knocks, and his head jerked up like he had forgotten where he was or how long he had been there. When he saw her standing there, he took his glasses off, putting them down on the desk and rubbing his forehead. She eased the door open, but he was already standing up.

“Hey,” he said, and it was so weird to hear him addressing her that she got lost in that for a moment. He waited for her to say something, but when she didn’t, he cleared his throat. “What’s up? Is Ryan okay?”

“Yeah, uh, she’s fine.” Isabelle hadn’t been anticipating the question; in fact, she hadn’t thought any of this through. “Jackie sent pictures a few minutes ago. It’s not… I need to talk to you. Not about Ryan.”

For a moment, she thought he was going to say that he didn’t want to talk to her, but he didn’t, instead just stepping towards her so that she backed out into the hallway, shutting the office door behind her. He had taken over the office downstairs, the library between their bedrooms was all hers, and they didn’t trespass on each other’s territory. She thought that they needed to go somewhere neutral, settled on the living room where she sat down on the big couch. In any other world, if Alex hadn’t been giving her the silent treatment for a month, he would have sat right next to her. Instead, he commandeered the armchair in front of the fireplace, sitting down and looking at her, waiting for her to say something. Anything.

“What’s going on?” he asked, and she got another flash of the person he must be at work, all business, nothing personal.

It was too formal for them. It was too formal for this conversation. All she wanted to do was reach out and touch him, but it felt like he was a million miles away even when he was sitting right in front of her.

Come on, Isabelle. Out with it.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, too nervous to even look up at him. “About the way the last month has gone. About acting so… childish. About what happened with Nicky.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that.” There was still a coldness running underneath Alex’s words. “You’re a big girl. You can do whatever you want.”

She hated that response. She wanted him to care. She wanted him to have a reaction. She wanted him to accept her apology so that they could move on and get back to the people they used to be around each other. She wanted her best friend back, and at this point she didn’t care at all if he had a girlfriend, if he brought Kristy around every day, as long as it meant that he was talking to her again.

“I do need to apologize.” She tried to remember everything that she had learned in law school about communicating effectively, but it seemed like so long ago. “And I’m sorry for what I said to you that night in my bedroom. At the party. You spent a long time trying to make everything so perfect. And I ruined it by crossing that line.”

At that, Alex jerked his head up. “You remember that?”

His question derailed her train of thought completely. “I… What? Remember what?”

“Remember what you said to me. What you told me. You remember.”

Isabelle frowned, trying to figure out what the hell he was getting at. “Well… yes.”

“You were really drunk, Izzie.” At the sound of her nickname coming out of his mouth instead of her full name, her heart leaped. She didn’t know if it just slipped out, but after so long it felt like coming home. “I didn’t think… when I saw you the next morning with... I thought maybe you were just… I don’t know.” He trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished.

She really hadn’t wanted to talk about this part, hadn’t expected to have to rehash it. “When I said that stuff to you… I wasn’t just saying it because I was drunk. I mean, I was drunk, but all that did was give me the courage to say all this stuff that I had been thinking for a long time.” He opened his mouth to say something, but she rushed on. “I’m gonna be honest, I totally forgot about Kristy in that moment because I was too caught up in how I was feeling. So I’m an asshole for that and I should have thought about the position I was putting you in.”

Alex sat back, studying her. She waited for him to say something because she wasn’t sure what else she had in her. But when he finally spoke, it was the last thing she was expecting him to say. “I’m not with Kristy anymore.”

She swallowed hard. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, I was never with her with her. But we stopped seeing each other a while ago.”

“A while ago when?”

“Right after New Year’s.”

“New Year’s?” Isabelle damn near exploded. “You haven’t been together since New Year’s?”

Alex shrugged. “That was the last time I saw her. At the New Year’s Eve party. Why don’t you think she stayed here that night? Why do you think I came into your room that night?”

“I don’t know-”

But he wasn’t done. “Why do you think I spend every waking moment with you? Or ask you for help with all of my negotiations? Or haven’t had a girl stay the entire time we’ve been living together? Why do you think I got you that necklace for Christmas? Why do you think I spent Valentine’s Day with you? Why do you think I did all that stuff for you for your birthday?”

Her mind was spinning. “Alex-”

“Because I’m in love with you,” he burst out, and it dropped into the silence between them. She sat back; she knew her mouth had dropped open and her eyes were wide, but for all the words that she had read in her life, she honestly couldn’t comprehend what he had just said.

“You what?”

“I was going to tell you,” he said. “On your birthday. Jack was telling me I just had to do it, stop overthinking everything and say it. But then we were drinking and I didn’t want you to think that I was just telling you because I was drunk. Or because you were drunk. And then I was going to talk to you the next day but I saw you with him, and I… I thought you weren’t into it.”

Isabelle could barely even think, much less form a word or a sentence. She leaned forward, putting her head in her hands and playing back all of the interactions that they had had since last June. He had bought her that necklace, had sat with her on the couch watching Grey’s Anatomy on Valentine’s Day instead of going out with Kristy, who apparently he hadn’t seen in over a month at that point, had planned this great night for her birthday. And she had ruined it. She had been the one making it seem like she wasn’t interested, which was ironic to say the very least.

“You love me,” she finally managed to squeeze out.

“Yes.” He nodded once, something flashing behind his eyes, like he was steeling himself for her to reject him. “I have for a long time. For so many reasons. And for a long time I figured I would just sit in it, try to figure out how to live with it without telling you because I didn’t want to fuck things up between us. It’s not like this is a normal situation. But I kept thinking of what happened to Maddie and Dayo, about how they probably had all these things they were planning and then none of them got to happen because something horrible happened. And what kind of person would I be, what kind of example would I be setting for Ryan, if I didn’t really go for what I want?”

“And what you want is…”

“You.” He said firmly. “It’s always been you.”

Madeline had always wanted her to be with Alex. She saw something Isabelle originally didn’t; count on Madeline to always know what was best, even when she was gone. And Alex was right - they couldn’t be scared of the next bad thing happening all the time. They couldn’t let chances pass them by. She had been sitting back and letting life happen to her for so long that she forgot what it was like to actually take charge.

So even if it killed her, Isabelle was going to take charge, rejection and loss and fear be damned.

She stood up. “Come here.”

“What?”

“Come here, Alex.”

He got up from the chair so that he was standing just a couple of feet in front of her. She knew it was her turn; he had told her that he was in love with her, so she had to make the leap. She thought of all of the moments that he had been so close to her that she could see everything written in his eyes.

In all the months that they had been living together, all of the times that they had fallen asleep on the couch together, the few times she had gotten drunk and sat on Alex’s lap, the night he had put the necklace on for her, she had never really intentionally touched him, not like she was about to now.

He stood stock still as she reached out, tracing her hand up his arm and feeling all of the ropes of muscle tightening under her fingers. She kept going until she was able to lock her hand behind his neck, pulling him down towards her until he was close enough for her to kiss him.

They had been moving around each other so carefully for so long, and she had wondered so many times what it would be like to kiss him, but this was nothing like what she had imagined. It was so much better and richer and realer, and she knew it was a cliche, but it was like she had been seeing everything in black and white for her entire life and now it was in color.

At first, she tried to go slow, being very intentional about the way she was touching him, but after only a couple of seconds, he took control, sliding his hands over her waist and pulling her flush against him until it felt like her entire body was on fire. His mouth was hot and demanding against hers, a little rough and a little gentle and exactly what she had been waiting for her entire life.

She drew in a sharp breath when he pulled back, felt like she was going to pass out from lack of oxygen as he swept his hands down her back, pulling her even tighter against him. “I’m in love with you too,” she breathed out, and he smiled. She hadn’t seen him smile at her in so long that it was like the sun coming out for the first time since winter began.

“Really?”

“Really.”

A couple of minutes later and he was already working at the soft skin on her neck, rasping filthy things into her ear as he did so and making her legs feel like they were going to give out. She couldn’t help the whimpers that came out of her mouth, and by the time he manhandled her up the stairs and pushed her back onto her bed, all she could think was that it was about fucking time.

Afterwards, she laid with her head pillowed on his arm, one of his hands tight against her hip and the other running the necklace he gave her between his fingers. “You’re still wearing this.”

“I told you.” She rolled towards him slightly until she could crane her neck to look up at him. “I haven’t taken it off.”

He grinned down at her, running his hand up and down her side in big, lazy strokes. “Well,” he said easily. “They probably won’t be the last diamonds you get from me.”

She pushed herself up on one arm so that she could look down at him. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re basically already married, Izzie,” he said, rolling his eyes at her like she was the one who had just lost her mind. “I’m just saying. If you’re my girlfriend now, I’m expecting that to be, like, long term.”

“Wow.” She laid back down, completely unable to take her eyes off him. For so long, she had only gotten what seemed like glimpses of him from across the room, surrounded by people, and now he was all hers. “Alexander Ludwig saying the words long term.” He snorted, wrinkling his nose at her. “So am I your girlfriend now?”

“If you want. Because it sure as hell is what I want.”

“Then I just have a few questions.”

“Shoot.”

Isabelle took a deep breath. “What happened when we went on that date?”

She was lying against his chest, and for a second it felt like he stopped breathing. Instead of answering, he sat up. “I’ll explain. Right now. But I need you to come somewhere with me.”

✨✨✨

**summer**

Isabelle could not believe that Ryan was two years old now. She could speak enough to tell Alex and Isabelle what she wanted. Sometimes she called them Mom and Dad; sometimes she called them Izzie and Alex. They had decided not to put too much emphasis on it; whatever she wanted to do, they were fine with. When she was older, they could explain. She could build block towers and put her shoes away and name all the animals in her books. She ran around so much that they could barely keep up with her; Alex was convinced that she was going to play soccer or run track. She got excited when she saw them, and she became more and more independent by the day (sometimes the second, Isabelle thought).

When Isabelle thought back to Ryan’s first birthday, it still felt like her heart was going to break sometimes. They had kicked around the idea of having something small, but Isabelle knew that Madeline would have hated that; she would have wanted Ryan surrounded by all of the people who loved her. So they invited all of their friends and family and Ryan’s friends from daycare until the house was packed with people and full of love.

One of those people was Alex’s mom.

For as much as Alex talked about Sharlene, Isabelle had never met her before. She also didn’t know that Sharlene had MS.

When Alex got out of bed, Isabelle had no idea what was going on. All she knew was that what had just happened would forever be one of the best moments of her life. But she didn’t know what to expect when he pulled her out of bed, handing her yoga pants and a big sweatshirt that she had stolen out of his closet months ago. He wouldn’t tell her where they were going, but she figured it out once they left Westchester and started flying upstate.

“Alex,” she said, somewhere around Poughkeepsie. “Are we going to your mom’s?”

Finally he broke the whole secret-keeping kidnapping shtick that he had been keeping up since they got out of bed. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He kept his eyes on the road, giving her free rein to look at him as much as she wanted. It still felt weird, like she was doing something that she shouldn’t be doing, but then he looked over at her, saw her staring at him and smiled, putting his hand on her leg like it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world. “My mom is sick,” he said. It was matter-of-fact, the way he said it making it clear that this was something that was entirely too normal to him.

Isabelle didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t have to say anything because he just kept talking. “She has MS. She was diagnosed after all four of us were born, but really soon after so I don’t ever actually remember her not being sick.”

“What is…” Isabelle slid her hand underneath Alex’s, flipping it over so that their palms were pressed together. “I don’t really know what MS is.”

“It’s a neurological disease,” Alex said, like he had explained this a lot. “She’s got lesions on her brain and stuff, so she has a lot of different symptoms. It all depends on where the lesions are. When we went on that date, I had to leave in the middle of it because my sister called me. I don’t remember exactly what happened that time, but she ended up in the emergency room.”

Everything started to come together as he spoke. “Does that happen a lot?”

“Yes.” Alex squeezed her hand, keeping his eyes on the road. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, but it looked like a muscle in his jaw was twitching. “She’s not in the hospital every time, but if things start to get bad, we all go over there so that we can be with her in case we need to take her in.”

“So that’s where you go. In the middle of the night.”

“Yes.”

They rode along in silence for a few minutes, Isabelle processing everything that he had just said. She had spent so long assuming that he ran out on her to meet some other girl, that every night he left he was with Kristy. She hadn’t even considered that he was going through a whole lot more shit than just raising Ryan and dealing with the death of his best friends.

She was an asshole. And she told him so.

“You’re not, Izzie,” he said firmly. “I should have told you. I just… I haven’t ever told anyone this stuff before, you know? It’s been me and my sisters and Nick dealing with it for so long that it didn’t really occur to me that I wasn’t alone anymore. It’s not just me leaving my apartment in the middle of the night. It’s me leaving you and Ryan.”

“It doesn’t matter. Your family should be the most important thing.”

“You two are my family too.” Alex looked over at her, tilting his head to shield his eyes from the sun as he did so. “You are just as important.”

Isabelle was nervous to meet his mom, and not just because she had just slept with her son. There was so much about Alex that she didn’t know yet, but she wanted to, and this was where it began.

The first thing Sharlene said to her was, “So you’re the girl my son can’t stop talking about.” Alex muttered something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like “Shut up, Ma,” his cheeks flushed red the way Isabelle’s normally did when he gave her that look that Leven and Jackie had been talking about (the one that she had finally noticed earlier when he was actually taking her clothes off).

“You talk about me?” Isabelle asked, elbowing Alex in the ribs as soon as his mom went into the kitchen to get plates of coffee cake.

“No.” Alex narrowed his eyes at her, elbowing her back. “Not, like, a weird amount.”

Isabelle smirked. “You really do love me.”

It felt completely surreal as he put his arm around her, pulling her towards him and dropping a quick kiss onto the top of her head. “You could have known that a long time ago,” he said, lowering his voice. “You’re just so goddamn stubborn.”

“Pot, meet kettle.”

They stayed at Alex’s mom’s house for a couple of hours, calling Jackie on their way back and telling her that they would swing by and pick up Ryan. “Wait, the two of you are together?” Jackie asked, her voice coming in tinny over the car phone. “Like you’re talking to each other?”

“Yes, Emerson,” Alex said. He sounded exasperated, but there was a smile on his face. “We’ll explain everything when we stop over.”

“Don’t bother,” Jackie said. “I’ll bring her over.” And she hung up.

“You know she’s calling Leven,” Isabelle said. “There’s going to be an army waiting for us.”

There was, Jack and Jackie and Leven sprawled in the living room, Ryan and Jillian making block towers and laughing hysterically as Jack knocked them over. When Alex and Isabelle came in the front door, all three of them jumped up and started yelling over each other. Alex finally got them all to shut up and calm down, but that only lasted for a couple of seconds because when Isabelle informed them that she and Alex were together, all hell broke loose.

“Together together?” Leven shrieked. She had a cup of coffee in her left hand that Alex had the foresight to dart forward and grab before it went flying all over the insanely expensive rug. (Honestly, Isabelle had no idea what Madeline had been thinking when she bought it. She had a baby, for fuck’s sake.)

“Yes. Together together.”

“When?”

“Today.”

There was a beat of silence as the three of them all looked at each other. Alex sighed. “Oh, come the fuck on.”

“What?” Isabelle looked up at him.

He narrowed his eyes. “Just say it. Who won the bet?”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Not me.”

“Goddammit.” Leven reached into her purse, hidden on the floor between the couch and a side table, pulling out her wallet. “Every fucking time.”

“Because,” Jack said cheerfully, collecting the twenties that Jackie and Leven shoved at him bitterly. “I am the hopeless romantic in this group. The only one who truly believes in love-”

“We’re married!”

“The one who had absolute faith that someday, our best friends would get their heads out of their asses and see that they were made for each other-”

“Okay!” Isabelle cut him off before the redness in her face could get any deeper. “I think that’s enough of that.”

“What’d you pull?” Alex asked, grabbing the wad of bills out of his hand before he could stop him and counting it quickly. “Jesus Christ. Four hundred dollars? You three have a problem.”

“We’re parents,” Jackie said hotly. “This is where we get our entertainment. At the expense of the two of you and your horrific communication skills.”

“Well.” Alex shoved the money back at Jack. “You are definitely buying drinks the next time we go out.”

And now they were all in the backyard, Ryan sitting on a blanket on the ground, a tiny crown on her head and glitter all over her clothes and a big smile on her face. Alex was sitting on one side, Isabelle on the other, and Jackie was making her way down the porch stairs carefully, Ryan’s second birthday cake in her hands, two tiny candles flickering on the top.

“Okay,” Isabelle said as Jackie set it down in front of them. “Make a wish, Ry.”

There was a mad scramble as parents tried to hold their children back from rushing the cake, but eventually Ryan figured out what was going, making a valiant effort to blow out the candles before Alex did it behind her. Everyone was clapping and taking pictures and more than one person was crying. Isabelle couldn’t even look at Leven because she knew that if she did, she would totally lose it.

She missed Madeline and Dayo all the time. But she saw them every time she looked at Ryan. She saw them in the way she talked and spoke and made them laugh, and she knew that connection with them would only get stronger with every single day that Ryan got older. And she knew that Madeline was somewhere watching them, snickering with Dayo about the fact that she had been right about Isabelle and Alex. Just because her sister wasn’t here didn’t mean that she was gone; she would always be there, and just knowing that filled the hole in Isabelle’s heart a little bit.

Jackie cut the cake, doling out pieces on paper plates as fast as she could. Ryan already had icing smeared all over her face and in her hair and down the front of her shirt, and she was having the time of her life. After a little while, Isabelle got up to go find a Wet One, Alex following her and cornering her in the pantry.

“Hey,” he said, scaring the bejesus out of her. She whipped around, barely missing whacking her head on one of the shelves. “Whatcha doing?”

“Holy shit, Alex!” She pressed a hand against her heart. “What the fuck?”

He grinned at her. “I just figured it wouldn’t really be Ryan’s birthday if we weren’t hanging out in the pantry together.”

Her mind flashed back to last year, running over all of the things that had changed since that. “Is this gonna be some sort of tradition?”

“We’re a family.” Alex reached out, slipping his hands around her waist and kicking the door shut behind him. “We need to start making our own traditions now, don’t you think?”

She tilted her head back, the only light coming from the little bulbs underneath the shelves. She couldn’t think about anything when his lips were on her neck like that. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

“Good,” Alex said, and she could feel the smile on his face against her skin.

She had Ryan. She had Alex. She had Jackie and Jack and Leven. She had her parents and Alex’s family and people who loved them and had been there for them and would make sure that they were never alone.

She wasn’t scared anymore. If there was anything the last year had taught her, it was that she could handle anything, that the world was going to throw really shitty things their way, but as long as she had the people she loved the most around her, she was invincible. They were invincible. They were strong. They would survive.

Her heart was warm, and they were celebrating the birth of the person who brought them all together in ways that Isabelle hadn’t even realized that they needed. There was a lot they still didn’t know, a lot of challenges to come, but what she had figured out was that she didn’t need to have everything figured out. Their moments would come.

And that was really what mattered, wasn’t it?


End file.
